


What We Already Know

by crystalsexarch



Series: Unlimited Umbral Works [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Angst and Porn, Au Ra Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Developing Relationship, Dragoon Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Emotional Sex, F/M, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Masturbation, Mutual Masturbation, Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Pining, Porn with Feelings, Power Play, Slow Burn, but it's actually mostly ambiguous, do you believe me???, everything is gonna be okay i promise :')), should you??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2019-10-16
Packaged: 2020-09-29 16:37:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 26,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20439155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalsexarch/pseuds/crystalsexarch
Summary: This is a story about loss and vulnerability.The Warrior of Light falls for a man shethoughtshe'd never see again, while trying to get over one she neverwill. Spicy scenes with a number of partners, but ultimately WoLxExarch.Chapter 15The Warrior returns to the Source to get some closure from someone she's been avoiding for a while.Table of contents officially live. More to come with 5.1. There's also going to be a sexy spin-off series. So...have fun waiting for that.NOTE- All chapters with explicit content will have a character's name in the chapter title. If it says plot, the content is lower than E, and it deals with WoLxExarch stuff. But let's be real, you could read the E content on its own.





	1. table of contents

**01\. table of contents**

✿

**02\. shame without guilt**  
_No explicit content - an introduction to the basic plot._  
"I thought always that…that you might have been waiting for some kind of sign from me," she said. "That I should have told you how much I valued you. And when you left I thought...in another world I could have convinced you to stay.”

The Warrior of Light and Darkness pulls the Exarch aside to apologize.

✿

**03\. things yet unspoken**  
_Explicit content featuring Crystal Exarch._  
For decades he had been content to play the role of an aging mentor, a pure and virginal wiseman. Bits of that persona, parts of that facade had been dying since his first night at the Crystarium after the defeat of Emet-Selch.

✿

**04\. things we cling to**  
_Plot and explicit content featuring Aymeric._  
She was trying to figure out if she really loved him, or if she loved only what he reminded her of. Until she knew, she didn’t think it fair to be with him. For his sake.

✿

**05\. strictly platonic**  
_Explicit content featuring Estinien, and plot featuring young G'raha Tia._  
“You’d be surprised,” she said. “I daresay some of them find my draconic features...arousing.”

✿

**06\. arousing no suspicion**  
_No explicit content, but angst-filled romance between the Warrior and the Crystal Exarch._  
“Please,” she said, returning her gaze to meet his. “G’raha, please - “

He winced and rubbed his forehead. “It’s indecent - improper when you call me that.”

“Why, because it makes you feel something?”

✿

**07\. prophetic dreams**  
_Explicit and romantic content with the Crystal Exarch._  
“G’raha, tell me...have you any fantasies?”

All he could do was laugh; a simple tactic of deflection.

She twisted herself to sit sideways in the chair and crossed her legs. The hem of her dress rose to sit just under her knee. Black tights held her form beneath. “I could tell you about my dreams, if you prefer…”

✿

**08\. giving in**  
_Explicit content with a very love-starved Crystal Exarch._  
Touching another person was a sacred act that made holy relics of his fingers, her face. What gods was he supposed to pray to? All he could hear was _want want want. I want this. She wants this._ The calling alone could have brought him to the ground - so what in the world was keeping his lips from hers?

✿

**09\. i love you**  
_Explicit content with Haurchefant. Also sad._  
The Warrior remembers a time another person told her he loved her.

✿

**10\. like a scholar**  
_Explicit content with the Crystal Exarch, the gift that keeps on giving._  
His face gave her absolute faith in his ability to fuck her halfway to the Source and back.

✿

**11\. religion**  
_Explicit content featuring the Crystal Exarch, who is starting to remember how this whole thing works..._  
So much for "be gentle with me."

✿

**12\. a temporary current**  
_No explicit content, but angst and romance and ugh._  
Aymeric worries about the Warrior of Light while she's, unbeknownst to him, basking in the light of new-found love. The Exarch finds himself prying into the Warrior's past so he can understand her present better.

✿

**13\. spell in waiting**  
_Plot between the Warrior and Exarch, as well as explicit content featuring flashback Estinien._  
The Exarch wonders whether he is taking advantage of a grief-addled person, and the Warrior reminisces on one of her grief-addled decisions.

✿

**14\. pure beam**  
_Explicit, loving, wonderful content with the Crystal Exarch._  
“They need not worry for me.”

“Perhaps.” She moved to straddle him and wrapped her arms around his neck, wearing a testy pout. With her hips atop his, their heads were at about the same level. “But _I_ would like to. To worry on your behalf.”

✿

**15\. orogenesis**  
_No explicit content - just sadness._  
The Warrior returns to the Source to get some closure from someone she's been avoiding for a while.


	2. shame without guilt - plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I thought always that…that you might have been waiting for some kind of sign from me," she said. "That I should have told you how much I valued you. And when you left I thought...in another world I could have convinced you to stay.”
> 
> The Warrior pulls the Exarch aside so she might make known her shame.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Non-explicit chapter. Just some background for where relationships lie for now. Next chapter is explicit.

The Warrior came to the Ocular unannounced, speaking of Silvertear Lake. After a short introduction, she said:

"I want to talk about it.”

Of course the Exarch wanted the same thing, but he’d lived lifetimes semi-satisfied with a hollow in his side. The man was worth his weight in wanting. Nonetheless, he smiled. “Rest assured, I’m in no position to turn you away at any hour. After all I’ve put you through.”

“Then let’s venture out now.”

Before he could think to reply, she raised her hands behind her head. With a click, she slipped her helmet off and held it against her side.

“That is,” she pressed on, “unless you’re busy.”

For someone who’d spent ages concealing his own face, he found himself unsettled when met with her gaze, almost bitter that she’d used so much power against him at once. Brushing a hair from his face, he chided himself internally for his double standards. “You must be serious,” he said.

“I am.”

Mercy.

Since the Warrior’s arrival on the First, the Exarch had mostly seen her smile from the nose down - hidden as she was by the spiked mail of her class. But to see it light up her cheeks, wrinkle beneath her eyes unhidden - this was another matter entirely.

To shake off the desire to trace her laugh lines, he reminded himself how many years had passed since last their eyes met and turned to his portal, glistening blankly like a useless mirror. Usually he used the thing to look _at_ her - not away.

“Well,” he said. “We might as well make it an occasion. Shall I bring…?”

The Warrior covered her mouth and let the Ocular ring out with her sweet laughter, just as mischievous and childlike as ever it had been. “Please don’t say sandwiches.”

His ears straightened and his cheeks went red all over again. She continued giggling as he clasped his crystal fingers around the collar his cloak, uncertain if the sound made him feel younger or older.

“Please, only if you’re hungry,” she said, quelling her amusement. “We can have a walk without a picnic.”

Regardless of her warmth, a pit in his stomach told him he wasn’t allowed to be happy yet.

-

Truthfully, she was terrified. The fear made her nervous, and the nerves made her laugh. Laugh at nearly everything. Laugh at him asking how her wounds had healed, laugh at Lyna regarding the contrast of her baby-faced countenance with the rest of her armor. Laugh at herself nearly dropping her helmet in Lakeland, at G’raha ready to catch it.

“Did you have a particular destination in mind?” he asked, once they’d passed the road to Ahm Araeng. He was trailing behind her a bit, but keeping up well enough. “Though I am loath to hold you back - and full eager to travel with you - I am yet bound to the Tower.”

“I know.” She didn’t turn back. “Not much farther now.” Then after a few more steps: “I can carry you if you want, Old Man.”

“That won’t be necessary.” His voice was soft. He sounded nothing like the boisterous man he used to be. Not even like the man who raged against the Ascian Emet-Selch just weeks prior. “I’m sorry.”

They were nearing the docks now. She had a clear view of where she’d been planning to take him - to the island she knew inexplicably as Bismarck - but just left of the path was an acceptable substitute. She stopped walking and turned over her shoulder. “Do not be. This place shall do.”

He looked wary and relieved at the same time.

The Warrior helped him up the hill, holding his pale hand in hers, hardened from years of wielding a lance. When they got to the top, he pulled away and they sat with their eyes to the water. She set her helmet to the side and pulled her knees to her chest as she had done in Kholusia when they sat at a similar distance under different circumstances. “That island,” she said. “What know you of it?”

He regarded the craggy mass. “The Isle of Ken. Or if the stories are true, then…”

“Bismarck of the First.” She cocked her head. “So you have heard?”

His eyes wandered to the ground where his fingers coiled around a blade of grass. “I confess, your deeds continue to fascinate me even as you complete them.”

“I would like to talk about...my deeds.”

At that, his ears perked up. How he had hidden them for so long eluded her. “I welcome you to do so.”

“Right.” She looked down and fiddled with her rings. “Well, as you well know now...by means of that very island I traveled to the Tempest to confront Emet-Selch...and to...find you.”

He nodded once, slowly.

“I should say...I always knew it was you.” She smiled a crooked smile, a dishonest one. “But somehow seeing your face unveiled made me understand something else.”

“My friend,” he nigh whispered. “What did you understand?”

She looked to the side and ran her palm over her battle-worn helmet, hoping it was still sleek enough to soothe her nerves. “I understood the reason I’ve been hurting has nothing to do with the light I once bore.”

Long ago, the drama of the sentence would have made G’raha Tia burst into laughter, she thought. Instead, a dozen expressions took turns shading his face before shame won out and he looked away. “Over a hundred years to contemplate,” he said. “And still my lack of foresight could have cost us...could have cost you everything.” He shifted his sitting position on the ground and turned to face her more completely. “Once again, I must apologize. Weeks later I have only just begun to atone for my mistakes.”

She held her eyes closed. “Do not say such things.”

“I…I have heard you. Yet I-”

“I need you to be strong, so I may make my own shame known.” Battle was easy. Battle was so, so easy. With a final tap, she brought her hand away from her helmet and imagined the harsh words Estinien would have for her if she traveled all this way only to return a coward. “I might speak....I must speak of...a difficult thing. But things between us will be better for it.”

“Far be it from me to stop you...and I would help if I can.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “Then speak as G’raha Tia. And tell me what you thought of me when first we met.”  
_

What was she getting at? And what’s more, why did he feel suddenly like he had the upper hand in the conversation? “Forgive me,” he said, lowering his gaze. “Though to you a few months may have passed, I have seen many years since last I saw you. Well, before…”

“But you remember.”

He rubbed his left palm with his crystal fingers. Of course he remembered. Though at the time he had no idea how much those memories would mean to him, how formative they would prove to be, how desperately his mind would drift back to them day after endless day. “Well...you were distant. And kind.”

“Distant…”

“And kind, I say.” He waved a finger. The more thoughts he shared, the likelier she was to figure out exactly how often he had thought them. “Always I strove to be close to you, to learn from you, and...perhaps one day gain your favor.”

“And by the end of it all, did you feel you had done so?”

He cocked his head to the side. What did the past’s truth matter to her now? With his heart beating so fast it seemed almost to knock against his transformed parts like a rapping hand at the gate. _No_ was his gut answer. _I was never worthy_.

But what part was he trying to play, now? The Crystarium’s Crystal Exarch, or the Warrior’s G’raha Tia? Even in old age he found himself eager to please...and in this case terrified as well.

“I...can’t say I catch your meaning,” he said after a while.

With a grunt, she shifted her hips forward and lay back upon the soft earth. A strand of hair slid over the curve of her shoulder. A soundless cascade. “Join me.”

After blinking a few times, he did. The ground was cool on his neck, the sky inviting above him. Memories of the Source surfaced in his mind’s eye, and he had to remind himself where he was - where he had been for so long.

“Back then,” she started after a while, “I was not the person I should have been for you.”

He inhaled and prepared to speak, but she tapped his crystal arm to cut him off. He flinched at the sudden contact, felt somehow that it had been an accident, and his fault.

“L-let me explain myself first.” The weakness in her voice almost made the Warrior sound like a child. He started to turn his head but realized she may have lain herself back to encourage him to look anywhere but her face. The idea reminded him of Lyna’s girlhood.

There was a long pause before she spoke again.

“I was cold, not kind. I was rude, not distant. Even though you met my every slight with warmth. Loss and loneliness had made me callous...and I wasn’t sure how to trust anyone.”

A shuffling sound at his side. Wiping her eyes? The hair on the back of his neck stood up.

“And I thought always that…” she continued. “That you might have been waiting for some kind of sign from me. That I should have told you how much I valued you. And when you left I thought...in another world I could have convinced you to stay.”

_Stay_.

She had said it once before, in much the same tone. It gave him the same cold feeling, too - now exacerbated by the realization that she maintained she had meant it. Why else would she be talking about it now?

“All that has happened to you since then,” she said. “All that you have suffered....I bear the weight of it for pushing you away. Despite the crisis we appear to have averted...I fear I....can never be sorry enough for the pain I put you through.”

Heat pulsed through his body and he felt almost like he could float away at too quick a movement. He said her name and turned his head, but once again she cut him off.

“I know we are set upon a path far better than the one you have lived through,” she said. “That doesn’t keep me from hurting - because I hurt you.” Her lip trembled and she set her arm across her eyes. “I don’t even deserve this miraculous chance to apologize for the decisions I have forced you to make.”

Beholding the Warrior of Light and Darkness, helmet removed, reclined upon the cool earth of Lakeland with tears in her eyes - it filled him with a certain levity. A levity that rested at the back of his throat and made his eyelids burn. In a rush, he sat up. “My friend,” he said. “You are very dear to me. And that has always been the truth.”

He spoke for G’raha and the Exarch.

She stayed still, arm yet covering her eyes.

He continued, feeling warm and dizzy. “I...I won’t deny your very presence encourages me to take chances. But I maintain you only make me more certain of that which I already know.”

She peered at him, barely moving, eyebrows low. “G’raha Tia,” she said.

He winced and looked down at the folds of his cloak. “You...you call me this, and I know other things. Things yet unspoken between us. Things perhaps best left that way.”

She moved to raise herself from the ground.

In a panic, he stood and dusted himself off. “I must go now,” he said, rubbing his hands together and trying not to hurry down the hill too quickly. “Please, I would have you see me again before you return to the Source.”

“Wait,” she said. “G’raha-”

“I must think.” He turned back and saw her halfway off the ground, propping herself up with one hand on her helmet. The sight helped him manage a wistful smile. “I would like to see you again very soon. But for now I beg you allow me some few moments alone.”

He returned to the Crystal Tower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! Please let me know if you have thoughts, requests, anything...I'm relatively new around here so I don't know the ropes quite yet ;-;


	3. things yet unspoken - crystal exarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Crystal Exarch is feeling a little inspired.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> E rating kicking in here babes.

Somehow, he allowed himself to feel disappointment when she didn’t appear in the Ocular that evening, and again when a whole day passed in her absence. He went about his duties in a fever, tackling task by task like he had as a student. And for what? So he could pace like a madman through the halls of the Crystal Tower? Losing his nerve?

Things yet unspoken between the Exarch and the Warrior of Light.

By the time the sun had set, he found himself in direct confrontation with one part of the problem. And what’s more - nothing to distract him from it.

For decades he had been content to play the role of an aging mentor, a pure and virginal wiseman. Bits of that persona, parts of that facade had been dying since his first night at the Crystarium after the defeat of Emet-Selch, when, upon the departure of those attending him, he found an unexpected pressure between his legs, even as the hole in his chest sounded throughout his body.

That night he was happy, nigh giddy - and so he rolled onto his side and took himself by the hand, chancing even to whisper her name before gripping the pillow tight between his teeth and bringing himself to climax, imagining her legs wrapped around his hips, her breasts bobbing with the force of his every - thrust - 

Perhaps he was just happy to be alive.

Whatever the feeling was, it didn’t go away. The same impulse drove him to repeat his sin almost every night - stroking or rubbing himself as his body saw fit. If it had happened but once, he could have continued life without much more shame than he already carried. But when he started waking with lustful visions dancing in his head - and a growing heat in his center - he began to feel like less of a man for indulging.

Sure, as a youth he had grand designs for the Warrior’s body, but why should the vaunted Crystal Exarch entertain fantasies of…?

That evening blood was rushing in his ears, held low and twitching in frustration. Never, never, never could he appropriate the Tower’s amenities for the pleasure of guilt - though the thought had plagued his restless mind for moons now. The impulse was so powerful that just looking at the portal’s unwoken surface made his shoulders tense. Long had he resisted, instead sullying himself elsewhere with his imagination alone.

Yet now, with his mind bending and his knees weak, he thought he might approach the mirror.

How easy it would be...how rewarding…

With his crystal arm outstretched, he lowered himself at the top of the platform and felt the cool surface ring through his burning body. This place felt sacred, this place felt like a shrine. Yet he came to it with lust coloring his cheeks.

He didn’t _have_ to look at her. He didn’t _have_ to wake the mirror and betray his friend’s privacy. And furthermore, he couldn’t manage to convince himself he was only doing it to check on her well-being - not when he was already hard.

“Twelve have mercy.”

With a groan, he turned his back to the mirror and slid up against it. It felt like ice against his shoulders, but he relished anything to quell his body’s aching, anything that helped him commit to looking away and doing this on his own. Staring at the ceiling, as if that absolved him, he tensed his back and brought his left hand to his arousal, engaging it over his robes.

His Warrior. His _inspiration_…

He flushed at the thought of her deigning to visit him at that precise hour, that she would stumble upon him weak and wanting at the foot of the portal to the Source. A part of him almost craved it - and that part drove him finally to part his robes and reach beneath the band of his smallclothes, holding his breath in waves as the pleasure grew steadily.

If she should enter - if she should stay - what would she be willing to show him?

He groaned into his shoulder, picking up the pace. The heat of his gasping breaths glowed into his skin. It would be over soon.

Something clicked outside the room and he straightened himself in a flurry, the fantasy fading fast.

“My lord,” came Lyna’s voice on the other side of the door. “Are you within?”

He cleared his throat and righted himself, reaffixing his robes in the proper places. “Yes,” he said with his back to the door. Should she enter, she’d be unable to see the color in his cheeks and neck. “Is aught amiss?”

“No, my lord,” she said. “I did not mean to disturb you. Only to tell you I am retiring for the night, unless you have need of me yet.”

His breaths were slower, but still harsh. He swallowed hard. “Thank you, Lyna. You have my leave.”

“Very well.” With his mind less focused on debauchery, he could hear her footsteps trailing down the halls. When he finally heard nothing, he sank to the ground.

“Twelve have mercy…”

He pressed his forehead against the unlit portal and without a second thought conjured up a vision of the Warrior. Then he pulled back to see where she had decided to spend the night.

There she was, set before the night sky of Amh Araeng, dressed in full mail and her lance not far from her side. Alisaie stood next to her, saying something, something he dared not hear. The Warrior looked up at the Elezen over her shoulder, cocked her head to the side. Once, twice her lips moved. The conversation was over. Alisaie turned to leave. The Warrior was alone.

The Exarch could feel his heartbeat in his fingertips. What had he expected to find? Where had his wisdom gone?

The Warrior kept her gaze on the sky. Soon, he thought, she too would head to bed. And then he could not shame himself by watching her undress. He would turn away as soon as she stood. This was his promise.

But she didn’t move.

While the Exarch could certainly understand the desire to behold the brand new sky in all its glory, he was getting hot again - and increasingly frustrated with his propensity to make moral decisions for himself. A thin layer of sweat coated the skin of his shoulders and his inner thighs. He would love to sweat with her, this beacon of heroism and life. He would love to part her legs and let his body have its way with hers after all this time. He was a lecherous old man after all, he thought, biting his lip and blushing.

The longer he stared, the more he felt like she was there with him.

He slipped his hand once more around his arousal, somehow hotter than it was before. He leaned his right arm against the mirror’s surface and let his left work away with quick, full strokes. The pressure built again in his member, twitching each time he opened his eyes to behold her sitting ignorantly in her armor.

He needed to release. He was getting desperate.

Raising himself to his knees, he pushed his head against the cool surface and let his right arm drop to hold sensitive spots between his thighs, while his hips thrust into his hand. Sooner or later, the motion was involuntary and he was gasping like a virgin.

When he came, he doubled over and rubbed himself until he was too sensitive to continue, his legs tensing in time with his increasingly pitiful strokes. And then he let his body slump completely over the platform. He bid the light of the mirror die before giving himself a chance to look at her again. He wouldn’t have been able to stomach it.


	4. things we cling to  - aymeric

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We hear about the Warrior's days with an Elezen of note, while she tries to wrap her head (and perhaps later her arms?) around a certain someone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little sexy stuff...and some plot. Doubt this will be the last we see of Aymeric.

A dress.

When was the last time she had worn a dress?

Months ago, she realized, the first time Aymeric had invited her into his comfortable home. As she readied herself she found her thoughts drifting after him and his warmth and sincerity. Aymeric was one who had kept her from falling into old, toxic ways, but he was not the one who had broken her down and shaped her into something new.

Perhaps Aymeric would spend ages chasing both her and Haurchefant’s ghost, thinking one would lead to the other.

The first time he saw her naked was the first time he’d seen her cry since the Vault. And cry she did, leaning into his shoulder, shrinking herself down to the life of his body. When the tears stopped, he loosened his protective grip and let her push her lips into his.

After some quick escalation, the Elezen was straddling her much smaller body with his eyebrows knit in a way that told her he’d not done anything so sexually reckless since his adolescence. “Forgive me,” he whispered, shifting his hand from her now-bare breast to caress the back of her neck. “Is this what you want?”

She nodded her head with fever spirit. “Give me everything you have.”

He exhaled and worked to remove the rest of his robes in a flurry. “I’ve...I’ve not done this with someone so small,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

She bit her lip and felt her face grow hotter. The truth hurt, so she turned her head away from him. “I’m used to it,” she said. “Please don’t hold back.”

He groaned and continued kissing her, freeing his erection and pushing himself inside. It felt _good_ getting fucked by an Elezen again. Though he was gentler, quieter, and slower than her lost love, she wanted him and she wanted to feel full.

When his breaths grew ragged and her name poured constantly from his lips, she locked her legs behind him as best she could. “Inside,” she gasped. “Please, Aymeric. Give it to me.”

He reared his head back in pleasure and hit her deeply one, two, three more times - it was all he could manage - and then he spilled into her. The warmth rolled her eyes back into her head as her sex pulsed around him. He dropped to her chest. Though she couldn't see his face, she wrapped her hands around his head and tangled her fingers in his soft hair. Like that, they remained connected for some while.

She was trying to figure out if she really loved him, or if she loved only what he reminded her of. Until she knew, she didn’t think it fair to be with him. For his sake.

Nonetheless, his was the manner she channeled that afternoon upon her return to the Crystarium from Amh Araeng. She had scrubbed the desert dust from her skin and scales, dabbed herself with a sage-scented salve, and tried to find something “nice” in her wardrobe.

Such was the suggestion of young Miss Leveilleur.

The Warrior had gone to see her with an ambiguous problem - one she could scarcely wrap her own mind around, much less communicate to another person. But Alisaie was much like the Warrior in that she felt before she thought. This problem was certainly a feeling one, not a thinking one.

“I think you should take some time off,” Alisaie said after getting over the shock of having been asked for advice. “Though I am loath to keep you away from the heat of battle, you have more than earned respite - as well as the opportunity to discern whether absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.”

The Warrior muttered something in begrudging agreement, and Alisaie indicated she’d be off to bed soon. But before she disappeared, she stopped.

“Forgive me, but…could it be another occupies your thoughts these days?”

The Warrior, thankful her helmet hid most of her face, turned over her shoulder. “Can’t be certain.”

Oh, but she _was_.

That night she dreamed of fucking G’raha Tia.


	5. strictly platonic - estinien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Young G'raha Tia wants to get closer to the Warrior, but she's already in a strictly platonic relationship with an edgy 32-year-old elf man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The bit before the _ is NOT explicit. Everything after that though...uh...well...

“You know...I’ve never seen you without your helmet on.”

G’raha Tia expected her to jump, so stealthy had he been in his approach, but the Warrior remained motionless, perched at the edge of a crystalline cliff on the outskirts of Saint Coinach’s Find. Perhaps his pride should’ve been wounded, but it wasn’t. With his hands on his hips, he leaned over her shoulder at a respectable distance and cocked his head. “What’s that you’ve got there?”

She turned to look up at him, as though she’d only just become aware of his presence. In her hands she held what was quite obviously a muffin. But that’s not how she answered. “Weird bread,” she said, pinching a piece off and popping it into her mouth. “...care to try some?”

Since he couldn’t see most of her face, it took him longer to decide whether he thought she was joking. His guess: yes. So he tilted his head back and laughed before kneeling at her side. “May I join you?”

She twisted her lips. “Sure.”

Not a resounding response, but he sat anyway. She curled her tail around the other side of her body to give him room. “Pray tell,” he said. “Where did this weird bread come from? I’ve not seen any of the Sons with something like it.”

“Camp Dragonhead.”

“Ah.” He leaned back and flexed his shoulder muscles. “Your studies must take you there often?”

“Yeah.” She took another bite of the muffin. “I suppose.”

“Maybe I should come with you someday and see what else our neighbors have to offer.” His legs dangled off the cliff side, swinging absentmindedly in time with his tail.

She grunted. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t like it much. They don’t take too kindly to people who ask lots of questions.”

“Well, I’d have you to protect me, no? After all, if they’re giving you muffins they can’t be too upset with you.”

“Hmph.”

For a while, they stared into awesome backdrop of Mor Dhona. Once he had almost thought to stop bothering her for the day, he felt a nudge at his side. “You can have the rest,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows and took the muffin. “A gift? From you? I’ll cherish it with my life.”

“Mayhap you should cherish it with your stomach.”

With a serious expression, he held the muffin in his palm and raised it above his head. “Wasteful! I’ll never forget this day!”

“Well, don’t drop the thing off the edge, you silly man.”

“Now, now,” he said, half-scolding and laughing. “Tell me, do the Ishgardians get to see your face?”

Grumbling, she wrung her hands together. There was a sadness about her always, one he wished his antics could someday expel, but a sadness nonetheless. “Well, some few have...and fewer still have lived to tell the tale.”

It must have been a joke. Though he was already formulating a witty response, he stopped when he saw what she was doing. To his great surprise, she had reached both hands up to grip her drachen armet. It slipped off after a few mechanical clicks. The first thing he noticed was the hair, now freed, that cascaded down her back. Then he saw for the first time her eyes, big and bright despite her uncertain expression.

“By the Twelve!” he said, leaning in and blinking like he was trying to wake himself from a dream. “You! You’re…! You’re _cute_!”

She tilted her head down. “D...don’t make me put it back on.”

“By the Twelve, woman! I’ve half a mind to start courting you this very instant!”

She chuckled without raising her head. “You mean to tell me that wasn’t your goal from the start?”

In truth, he felt suddenly far less confident in his ability as a mischievous flirt. Something about her beauty shook him into realizing he was playing around with the Hero of Eorzea. He couldn’t believe the silly things he’d said to her.

“So, you’re not freaked out by my scales, then?” She rose and held her helmet against her hip

“Not in the slightest!” He remained seated, craning his neck to look up at her. “Could it be...the Ishgardians are of a different mind? Considering...”

It was a joke, and a bad one. Her nose scrunched and she clenched her eyes shut. Perhaps he shouldn’t have said it.

He shouldn’t have said it.

Yet, just when he opened his mouth to apologize, she shook her head and let out a few short laughs, like she was laughing at something dirty. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “I daresay some of them find my draconic features...arousing.”

For the nth time he felt caught off guard in her presence. “Oh! P-pray tell!”

She turned around and waved him off before using both hands to return her helmet to its usual place. “Another time, perhaps.”

_

Estinien was the first man and Elezen she had done anything remotely sexual with. The man liked to have his hands around something, her head or her neck. He liked to pull her hair while she pleasured him. He liked to pretend she wasn’t working hard enough up until the very moment of his climax.

She couldn’t remember the exact circumstances of their unusual arrangement - only that it happened shortly after she officially began her training as a dragoon. Perhaps they had been sparring. Perhaps they had reached an impasse. “You,” he could have said through heavy breaths, with his lance pointed at her from across a snowy clearing. “Show me your face.”

“M-my face?” she could have asked, much shyer then.

“Do as I say.” Could he truly have removed his helmet then and discarded it? “Here. A show of good faith.” His silver hair, had it truly been freed, would have trailed down his neck, covered in the sweat of battle.

Then she may have put her lance away and approached the man with caution, looking both ways before she did as he asked, her arms still sore from the match.

He would have eyed her like a territorial animal in the wild, taking in her features and assessing whether they made her a threat or…

“You’re a virgin,” he decided with a smirk.

She took a step back and covered her mouth. “W-what? Estinien - “

“I’m right and I know it.”

“What does it matter if I’ve - “

“It doesn’t. But surely you have needs.” He adjusted his stance and wiped the wet hair from his forehead. Nearly twice her size, he truly was sizing her up.

She felt a lump in her throat. “I’ve never...with…”

“With an Elezen,” he finished.

She shook her head. “With a man.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, many of us are not so complicated. Know the offer stands, should you find yourself wanting.”

And from then on, every sparring session ended with a little adventuring.

Estinien's casual, unfeeling approach to intimacy changed something about her. Her previous lover had been - well - a _lover_. But with Estinien there was no romantic pretense.

“Like this,” he said, guiding her to his hips. Neither of them had undressed fully. They never did. Never would. He liked to see her chest half-bare. It gave a sense of urgency, of impropriety, a sense that blended perfectly with a room in the least conspicuous inn in all of Coerthas.

She was trying to balance herself with her left hand on his thigh, her right pressed against his chest, when he pushed her lips onto his head. She gasped and took him in, though she could hardly accommodate his length. She tried to wrap a hand around the rest, but he grabbed her wrist, pulled it to the side. The angle strained her shoulder.

“No,” he scolded. “Your mouth should be enough.”

She groaned with him inside her, trying to make her tongue useful. With a quick laugh, he hitched his leg up between her thighs, and she practically squeaked. Never would she give him the satisfaction of seeing her grind against his knee, no matter how hot she felt. But she had to admit she burned. Despite her verbal aversion to his attitude, she came to enjoy something about being treated like a common wench, like someone he’d met at a bar. On a street corner.

Once he tired of her ministrations, he wrenched his hands behind her horns and forced her head down deeper, deeper, until she thought she would gag.

“My fellow Azure Dragoon,” he said after a lengthy sigh. “If only they could see you now.”

She grunted, clenching her eyes shut.

“What’s that? Have you got something to say?” He pressed against her forehead until she’d come up, leaving a trail of spit from her mouth to his tip.

“Us,” she said.

“Oh?”

“If they could see _us_. You’re just as debauched as I.”

“Hmph.” He shifted on the bed a bit. “We shall see about that.”

For a while they sat, breathing hard, while he regarded her red face, her breasts, her hard nipples. With her shirt unbuttoned, the collar had slipped down one shoulder, revealing a thin trail of scales stemming from her neck and down her back.

Squinting his eyes, he spoke again. “Touch yourself,” he said.

“What?”

“Touch yourself.” He took himself in his own hand and moved slowly up and down, taking his time. “Do it. You wouldn’t like the way I’d do it for you.”

She looked down, eyeing the the armor she’d left in a heap by the door. “You can’t be serious…”

“I’m full eager to show you how serious I am.” He leaned against the wall. The bed jostled with the motion. “Do it, Dragoon. You can start with your breasts.”

“With my…”

Heat had overtaken her face. This wasn’t something they had done before. Why did she feel so shy? And what’s more - aroused? She chanced a look back at Estinien. The sight of a man stroking himself was far from something she’d ever fantasized about, and yet seeing him going through the motion without any hint of pleasure in his face...any emotion or excitement...something about it made her gasp.

“That’s it.”

She had taken her right breast in her hand, cupping it, rubbing it in ways she never did for herself. What did he want to see? She wanted to show him. While the contact didn’t do much for her, the thought certainly did, and thus she found her left hand squeezing between her thighs to pressure something a bit more sensitive.

“No,” he said, now gruff. “Not yet.”

She bit her lip and relented, holding her thighs together. When she brought her left hand to her chest, her breath hitched. How had she never known her left nipple could be a beacon of pleasure? She took it between her thumb and index finger, squeezing it, rolling it, and thoroughly enjoying herself.

When she cracked her eyes open, she saw her partner had picked up the pace. What had once been a musical motion was now mechanical, and though he still held a troubled countenance, his frown had crooked in an unusual way - perhaps an involuntary way.

“Good,” he said between loud breaths. “Now spread your legs.”

With a Warrior’s speed, she ripped off her trousers and smallclothes and returned to her position in front of Estinien. Eyes half-lidded, she raised herself onto her knees and finally finally finally set her hand to her clit, tensing her thighs as her arousal waned and waxed in waves.

The sounds she made were truly embarrassing - her face reddened every time she opened her lips - and yet she couldn’t look away. He kept pumping himself, working himself closer and closer to the edge as she did the same, lubricating her fingers with her own arousal, circling until she was bucking into her own hand.

The only warning she got was Estinien saying her name. Then, he was upon her, pushing her flat onto the bed and straddling her much smaller frame. He never looked away, and he never stopped stroking himself, although he did grip her breast in his free hand, twisting it, twisting her until she reared her head back in pleasure and closed her eyes.

"Harder..." she said.

He came on her face. She gasped at the warmth on her nose, on her neck, just above her eyelid and other places. When she opened her eyes he was smiling like he smiled at his enemies.

She licked her lips, panting. “How...how dare you…”

“You’re not off the hook, Dragoon.”

He backed off her body and gave himself a moment before rushing to help her finish the job. It was too much all at once. It took him very little effort at all to lift her hips from the bed and rock them against his lips, his tongue. Gods, she’d never been so out of control. She reached for the covers, the bed post, anything to help her hang on for dear life.

“This is - I can’t - “

He dug his fingernails in where he’d gripped her. No relenting, no stopping, not for a moment.

An attempt at calling his name fizzled out as her eyes glazed over and her tongue hung limp at the corner of her mouth.

Just when she thought she’d go numb from pleasure, he plunged one finger into her, deeply, deeper than she’d ever been on her own. Her thighs came together around his head and, whimpering, she felt a release unlike anything she’d ever felt before. It lasted so long and left her trembling and weak long after he set her down. She hid her face behind her arm.

“Can’t say I’ve had a girl do that before,” she heard him say after a while.

“Do...do what?” Her voice was tiny.

“You mean you couldn’t tell? See for yourself then.”

Afraid, she raised herself on her elbow and looked down - between her legs a wet spot on the bed - as well as Estinien, smirking.

The color drained from her face. “I - I did that? I...”

Though she'd heard rumors, she didn't think it was possible for a woman to...well...

She could scarcely stomach the sound of the word.

“So it would seem,” he said. “I should say we are quite certain now which of us is more debauched.”


	6. arousing no suspicion - plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These two fools are too angsty to properly proposition one another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> G'raha and WoL.
> 
> No NSFW in this chapter, but relationship stuff...next time, however...

A dress?!

The Exarch hadn’t planned for this. In fact, the situation was quite serious indeed. After the Warrior’s trip to Amh Araeng, she had come upon him pacing the Ocular, sans helmet, sans armor, sans everything but the proper attire of a distinguished lady. What was he supposed to make of this?

“My - friend!” he said, nearly stumbling upon seeing her appearance. As though he had an audience, he darted his gaze back and forth to find only the imagined ghosts of his shame. “You must have come to say goodbye?”

“Are you well, Exarch?” she said with a hand on her hip. “I’ve yet to even say hello.”

“Yes, well - I had assumed your departure - your return to the Source imminent.”

She raised an eyebrow, like a teacher unimpressed with her student’s excuse. “Quite the contrary. I’ve decided to stay for...an indefinite period of time.”

Almost involuntarily, his hands rose from his sides and he clasped them together to keep them from communicating the true extent of his excitement. “That’s wonderful,” he said. “Your presence is a source of great comfort for the people of this land. And myself, I might add. Will you be staying here?”

“Here? You mean in the Tower?” She laughed.

Ah.

With her eyes already locked with his, he had no hope of looking away, no choice but to let her read his expression as he tried his best to maintain the trappings of his role as the Crystarium’s leader and as her friend. At first he raised his chin and his eyes widened, but with his next outward breath he restored his expression to normalcy - troubled, wanting normalcy. “Well,” he said. “I certainly cannot hope to fill this place on my own.”

She stepped towards him, eyes glancing absentmindedly at the adornments of the Ocular. “Joking aside, I was hoping you might give me a tour. Take me through some of our old haunts...if you could call them that.”

A testy smile, like he was lucky to be alive. “I’m not certain they qualify. But I would be happy to wander these halls with you at my side.”

She held out her arms. “I’m ready when you are, then.” But her smile faltered. “Although I must wonder…”

“Yes?”

“Have you put any thought into...those things left unspoken?”

He weaved his fingers together and looked straight down. “I may have, friend. Although I must ask your forgiveness once more, as I continue working up the courage to...continue taking chances.”

She nodded once with her eyebrows knit, like she was watching a drunkard stumbling off a straight line.

He told her he would put a few things away in the Umbilicus, and then they were off.

_

“I am happy you have decided to stay. For a time, anyway.”

The Exarch walked a few steps ahead of the Warrior with his hands behind his back. His pace was uneven, whimsical even, as they approached the space where they had once emerged from the World of Darkness. He spoke as if he didn’t wear his heart on the sleeve of his cloak.

“Truth be told, it was Alisaie’s idea,” she said. The walls were cold, like the rest of the Tower, as she let her fingers trail against them. “I’ve a few matters I hope to settle before I return to the heat of battle.”

“...I see.”

The whimsy in his walk waned for a moment. She took the silence as an opportunity to observe him. That walk of his - pep or no - was one factor that had led her to suspect his identity long before he sat her down in Kholusia. At most, he was a head taller than she, with a sturdy frame. At least...it was certainly sturdy in his youth. And in her dreams.

“Please, let me know if I can be of any assistance,” he said, turning over his shoulder. There was a touch of pink beneath his eyes.

“Perhaps you can.”

He mumbled or hummed something, though whether he was responding to her she couldn’t tell. They had arrived at a grand set of doors behind which the Warrior had fought Emperor Xande and had come to know the World of Darkness. G’raha held out his arm and set off a few mechanical clicks. All workings of the Tower were beholden to his touch, perhaps his very presence.

Could she someday be so moldable? So bending to the selfsame forces?

“G’raha, I - “

The doors lurched before them, but his ears tipped back at the sound of his own name. “Hmm?”

“I-I’m not sure. It feels strange coming back here without having to look over my shoulder.”

“I felt much the same upon my awakening.” He looked about the stage they’d come upon. “Shall we?”

The open air pushed into her lungs the moment they stepped across the threshold. She fixed her hair at her shoulders and followed the Exarch’s footsteps with a mischievous grin lighting your face. “Have you ever tried the throne?” she asked.

The wind blew his tiny braid about. “Hmm? Well, I never thought it fitting to make use of an Emperor’s adornments.”

“I mean, have you tried it at all? Just to see?”

The corners of his lips twisted up. “You’re welcome to it.”

She scurried to the seat of the structure and reached upwards, prepared to climb it as she normally would. Then she remembered she was wearing a dress and decided it best to preserve a bit of modesty. Still, ascending the magnificent throne of a larger-than-life emperor was a small feat for the Warrior.

“Join me,” she said upon reaching the top. The Exarch grabbed her outstretched hand and sooner or later he’d made it up as well. From their perch they could see much of Lakeland and beyond - as far as the summer haze would allow them. It was like seeing the world through a prism.

“Not much of a view,” he said, half-smiling.

“Oh? Do you prefer the scaffolding at Saint Coinach’s Find?”

“Tis more nostalgic to think on, anyway...” He clasped his hands over his knees with his legs hanging over the edge.

They sat perhaps a fulm apart looking something like dolls on a bedside chair. The Warrior leaned back on her elbows. “Can I tell you something, G’raha?”

To her surprise, he gasped and made himself small at hearing his name.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to hearing that name again. Even from you...”

“It can stay between us, if you prefer.”

He stayed silent.

She took a deep breath and twisted her lips. “I wanted to tell you...I’ve been dreaming about you.” Over the wind she barely heard a sound escape his lips...or could she be sure she hadn’t imagined it? No direct reply ever came so she continued.

“These dreams trouble me...and in truth they are the main reason I have decided to stay here.”

“I-I see.”

“Tis true Alisaie advised me to remain...but I let her believe I would not.”

He peeked over his shoulder, like he was afraid to find out how serious she was. “You mislead her?”

“Not just her. All who asked about my plans. All but you.”

Like it pained him, he sighed. “You...have done this so…”

“So I could stay here without arousing suspicion.” She looked away. “Stay with you. If that is your wish.”

_

“My wish?”

He could hardly get the words out, much less her name.

“Please,” she said, returning her gaze to meet his. “G’raha, please - “

He winced and rubbed his forehead. “It’s indecent - improper when you call me that.”

“Why, because it makes you feel something?” Fire in her wild eyes, more fire than he was capable of stomaching. “There is so much I’d be willing to give you, if only you would ask!”

He couldn’t look. His lip trembled when he opened his mouth and still it took ages for him to force the words out. There was not enough restraint in the world to keep him from fully resisting the urge to beg like a whelp. “Please,” he finally said, turning his blushing face away. “Forgive me, Warrior. It pains me to say...if there is aught you want of me...you have only to take it. Never could I deny you...and surely you know this...but I hardly have the strength nor the right to seek anything from you...anything from you at all...”

He held his eyes shut and waited for the rush, for something. He expected either she or the wind would have him pinned against the back of the throne before long. But neither of them came.

Instead, a pawing at his side. He opened his eyes and found her staring at him with big, beautiful eyes, unmarred by the moisture threatening to carry down her cheeks. She prodded weakly at his crystal arm until he raised it in confusion. And then she lowered her head onto his chest, snaking her arms around his body until they met at the small of his back. Warmth pooled where she breathed against him.

In such a position - she could hear his heartbeat, couldn’t she?

He spoke her name with little authority.

“Please,” she said into his collar bone. “Even if we never touch again, please hold me this once.”

He swallowed hard and twisted his lips to keep his own tears from welling over. With the speed of a sundial’s shadow, he finally let his arms close around her. Gently, at first, but the fever soon came through.

“Hold me like you once longed to,” she said.

He could feel her lips moving even through his clothes and realized it could drive him half mad. “You are a fool,” he said, gritting his teeth like each word cast another curse out into the world. “Thinking I had ever stopped longing for you.”


	7. prophetic dreams - crystal exarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'raha Tia is shy to remove his robes in real life, but perhaps the Warrior can encourage him by recounting the things he was willing to do in her dreams...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> May you all have wonderful dreams tonight.
> 
> This chapter has explicit content.

They sat across from one another in the Umbilicus. The room, it turned out, served the Exarch as a study, a base of operations, and a bedroom - should he ever actually sleep. Now, he and the Warrior used it as a private space where they could speak freely, perhaps more freely than either of them had to one another since they first met...months or years ago, depending.

“How long?” the Warrior asked. Between her and G’raha sat single table. She was half-draped over it, holding her head in her hand as she stared at him.

He was calm now. Something was holding him together, though he wasn’t sure what. “As long as I can remember,” he said. “When I met you I tried to deny myself the ridiculous truth...that I’d become enamored personally with the Hero of Eorzea.”

“You didn’t think yourself special enough?”

“I thought myself a fool.” He clasped his hands on the table. “And very unlucky, having fallen for someone so universally admired.”

“Perhaps not universally…” The fingers of her free hand danced to his, initiating contact he once thought worse than impossible: forbidden.

Now his eyes closed in peace and pleasure. Affection made her callouses a comfort.

After a while, she furled her brow. “You’re...sweating.”

“A-ah…”

He tried to draw his hands away, but she held them. “Well, this one is.” She tapped his left and turned her attention to the crystal. “This one, though…”

His tail twitched beneath his cloak.

With care, she spread his crystal fingers and matched her own along with them. His hands were bigger by almost a full digit, but a tremble made him feel far smaller. “You’re...still nervous about all this, aren’t you?” she asked.

A subdued nod. “For the past century, I have tried to convince myself my feelings for you were paternal or brotherly in nature. The charade is...a bit much to shake all at once.” Although in earnest he’d been doing a _fair job_ of shaking it for the past month, he hoped to avoid divulging the exact nature of his work.

She pulled her hands from his. “I can hold back, if you like. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. Tell me if I’ve gone too far.”

“Rest assured,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I would like to go much further. But it may take time.”

“Oh?”

He looked down. Perhaps it had been too much. Even that had taken him a grand stroke of boldness to divulge.

“G’raha, tell me...have you any fantasies?”

All he could do was laugh; a simple tactic of deflection.

She twisted herself to sit sideways in the chair and crossed her legs. The hem of her dress rose to sit just under her knee. Black tights held her form beneath. “I could tell you about my dreams, if you prefer…”

“You’ll make a fool of me yet, at this rate.”

“I fully intend to.” She tilted her head. “After all, not a soul in the First nor the Source understands that I’ve come here. My comrades know not to miss me.”

“I see…” Spending time alone with her certainly got his blood running, but he couldn’t dismiss the idea that she would leave him when she got the chance. Surely, after spending a few evenings in his absolute presence she would realize someone like the Warrior of Light and Darkness had better prospects. He hoped to quell that idea, or at least distract himself from it, if he could.

Shelves and books and papers - the accouterments of an eccentric, to be certain - surrounded them in the Umbilicus. Though it was plenty room for the Exarch, he thought perhaps…

“Shall we seek somewhere with a bit more space?” he asked. “I want you to be as comfortable as possible during your stay.”

She smiled. “How considerate.”

_

This was the dream:

It started in Amaurot, though she kept this fact from the Exarch as she related the tale. They sat atop one of the tallest of the forgotten city’s structures, wordlessly remembering the tragedy it represented.

For some reason, blood still spotted G’raha’s face, like they’d only just come from battle. His robes were ripped and missing certain parts, but he seemed unbothered. Eventually, the Warrior turned to him and put her hands on his cheeks, her gloves having suddenly disappeared. “G’raha,” she said. “We should be together.”

G’raha didn’t say a word but smiled as though he were privy to all the world’s beautiful secrets, even hers. With his crystal hand, he traced a line from her cheek, down her neck, then to her breast...suddenly bare in that strange way, stripped by the whims of slumber.

In the dream, she was so sensitive, so vulnerable. When he pinched her nipple, she reared her head back and gasped, eyeing him half-lidded. Sooner or later, he had brought her to the ground - the roof? Location was uncertain. It always was. What _was_ certain, even in the dream, was the very real pleasure she felt when he closed his lips over the tip of her breast and started tonguing her nipple, back and forth, with the maddening speed of a man who had all the time in the world.

In the dream, she closed her eyes but could somehow see him anyway, trailing his hand over to her other side and squeezing her whole, rubbing the point of her breast with his thumb alone. “I want more,” she said. “Please.”

She must have imagined his laugh, for she had never heard him chuckle so darkly in reality. With his lips still locked to her chest, his eyes peered up at her, his cheeks red and hot. She could feel him hard against her thigh, so strong, so warm. That’s what she wanted. She wanted that heat between her legs, pressuring her, pushing into her. Just let her see, let her touch, let her _take him in_.

But even in her dream, she had to wait. First, his crystal arm moved from her breast to her bare pelvis - where was all her clothes going off to, anyway? He held his hand flat against her, hard, with his fingertips just above where she wanted them most. It drove her crazy. She pressed against him, whimpering, trying to urge him farther down. But he was firm in his placement.

He raised his head from her breasts and eyed her almost scoldingly. Now his crystal-bitten shoulders were bare, as strong as ever they had been, and glistening with sweat. Dreams certainly took care of some of sex’s great inconveniences. For so long he stayed still with lust-colored eyes. So long that she strained herself under his weight, begging him to _please_ touch her, please just _fuck her now, by the Twelve_. A single touch would be enough to send her spiraling.

Finally, when she felt she had exhausted all her dignity, he put his index finger against her lips.

“Shh…”

Then he mounted her, rubbing himself with his tip teasing her clit. Even that pressure started her rise to climax - she rocked herself against him while he watched her writhe in desperation. When he finally pressed inside, she was _more_ than ready. She practically burst, in the dream and in reality, where she jolted awake so suddenly she was afraid the whole camp had heard her moaning, calling out his name.

Thankfully, it was a name many of them would not recognize. Even in the waking world, her pleasure pulsed throughout her body. In the privacy of her tent, she came a second time through the work of her own hungry hands and imagination.

Later, in the Tower, she hoped the talk of dreams would inspire him as much as her deeds did. To a wholly different end.


	8. giving in - crystal exarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> G'raha lets himself live just a little.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hmm...hahh...hrnng...well...it seems I've written 2,000 words of...well, something...
> 
> I can't say this is where I thought I'd be when I graduated...but here we are. And I'm happy for it.

She was warm.

By the Twelve, she was warm.

How had he ever dreamt of taking her when he could barely manage to press his head against her shoulder?

“G’raha…”

A shiver tracked throughout his body, her hand brushing a strand of hair from his neck. With only a tad of embarrassment, he cooed like a kit and pressed against her harder, reminding himself _he could do this. He had permission to do this_.

A quiet laugh emanated from her chest. “You are...quite affectionate, you know.”

His ears twitched. “Mmm. I beg you not tease me.”

“I would never.” She ran her hand over his shoulders, down his back, her other arm secure around his waist. It felt good to be held, especially by the Warrior. If things continued, perhaps he would find the courage to hold _her_ with authority, but that night he would do no such thing. Surely not.

When he peered up at her, he caught a curious look in her eyes. “You’ve got quite the place here,” she said, noticing him and smiling.

Suddenly feeling _very_ self conscious of how he was clinging to her like a frightened child, he sat up and looked about their surroundings.

The room was positioned in some forgotten corner of the tower, chosen specifically to account for the chance of someone wandering in that night and finding them together. They lay on an until recently dust-covered bed, renewed by the influence of magic. Although the room’s floors were mostly clear, piles of relics had accumulated along the wall...things unwanted or unnoticed by the citizenry of Norvrandt.

The whole place glowed with a familiar blue - dampened by tapestries left hanging on the walls. The Allagan symbols and figures they depicted were likely unknown to his companion...but he easily envisioned a future where he, having run out of moves to make and things to say, went into _conniptions_ from spinning too many an immense and tedious tale. Perhaps he should - 

“It’s going to be okay.” She squeezed his wrist. Her own cheeks were lit with pink, but he felt all the more delicate. Small, weak, moldable.

Why was he made of water? Gods…

“I’m sorry.” He hung his ears low and tensed his fingers into fists. “I’m not the man I used to be.”

Without hesitating, she reached out and set his palm just beneath her collar bone, over her dress. And she held it there.

_Ba-dum ba-dum._

The beats were at least as fast as his.

_Ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum._

What was he supposed to do with this knowledge? _You’re nervous, too_, he thought to ask, just to break the silence. But he didn’t ask. The action, meant certainly to embolden him, was coming to fruition.

He breathed her name once before bringing himself up to his knees, shifting his hand to her cheek, drawing his body closer. For her, he could be something, if only for a moment. Touching another person was a sacred act that made holy relics of his fingers, her face. What gods was he supposed to pray to? All he could hear was _want want want. I want this. She wants this._ The calling alone could have brought him to the ground - so what in the world was keeping his lips from hers?

“I...I want to touch you,” he said, slumping. “But I don’t know if I can.”

“Why not?”

He couldn’t stifle a pitiful little laugh. “It’s...a meaningless concern. Foolish, really. I hate to trouble you with it.”

Her countenance darkened. “I would gladly hear your troubles.”

“Well, it’s…” He couldn’t figure out what to do with his lips, talking or otherwise. “I’m afraid...you will come to regret your choice to stay with me. And far be it from me to - ”

“G’raha - “

“ - burden you with more than I have - “

“Listen to me.”

The Warrior pushed him back onto the bed and leaned over him, left hand resting on his thigh. He blinked his red eyes up at her with his lips just parted.

“If you won’t touch me, then _gods_ let me touch you. Before one of us goes crazy.”

A little sound escaped him.

“May I?” she asked, squeezing his thigh.

He closed his eyes. “P-please...my friend.”

The bed creaked while she repositioned herself. “You’re going to have to come up with something better than ‘friend.’”

He looked at her, half-lidded, half-adled with lust and other sensations. “My love...my everything…!”

She groaned and put her hands upon his shoulders, pushing him all the way down. Their first kiss was rough, led by her confident guidance. More kisses followed. She kissed him until he thought he’d fall to pieces. And then, their lips still pressed together, her hand traveled south.

“Ah!”

He broke away just to moan when she finally found what she wanted. Even through his robes, the pleasure was foreign enough to roll his eyes back - something she must have found amusing, for though sensation clouded his vision, he could see her tricky smile.

“How long has it been?” she said, her voice dark and breathy.

“I...I…” How could he hope to answer with her hand rubbing like a metronome against him? “Too long.”

“Have you been touching yourself?”

His face flushed all over again. To hide it, he turned and pressed his nose into the bed. “Please...beneath my robes…”

She didn’t have time to strip him down just yet. “Do you think of me when you do it?”

“Ah?” A sideways glance revealed she was red in the face and biting her lip. The expression melted him. He could have boiled water on his own forehead. “Always...always you.”

She went to kissing him again, tickling his lips with her tongue. Every nip made him twitch, made his clothes feel tighter, so tight, so warm, so wet with sweat.

With a groan, he sat up and pressured her backwards. She was already working at his sashes, the white, the red, both unceremoniously tossed to the side in little time at all. When her fingers reached his collar to remove the final piece, he swallowed and caught her hand. “You will be the first to see me,” he said. “I would ask to...to see something of you in return.”

She moved his hand to her breast. “You want to see?”

He sighed, tensing when his thumb found her nipple through the fabric. He squeezed and watched the Warrior gasp in time with the pressure. “Greatly.”

Her hands raced to the back of her neck, where she quickly undid whatever clasp held her ensemble together. It was the perfect opportunity for him to undress himself completely, but he only managed to undo the front of his final piece. He held both sides together just above his waist and watched her slide her garment over her formidable hips, panting.

He froze.

She laughed and tossed her dress from the bed. “What’s wrong?”

“By the Twelve…”

“What is it?”

“Have...have mercy on me…”

He buried his face in his hands, suddenly weeping, weeping for years lost and years wanting. The scarred body before him - his to touch and hold and have? Hot tears ran down his cheeks, his chin, all the way to his neck before he had the will to wipe them.

“G’raha - “

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, looking up again. “In all my years...no world...no reality could hold anything with half your wonder. Why I’ve been given the privilege, I cannot say...”

She blinked at him and approached, placing one hand on either side of his collar. Slowly, she slipped his robe off his shoulders, taking time to check his reaction, to make sure she wasn’t going too fast. When she had reached his elbows, he took to laughing, still crying happy tears.

“I hope I don’t disappoint you,” he said, with his eyebrows turned up.

“You could never.”

The robe was off. Her eyes flickered across his body. He knew what she must see: a half-man at best. But - one she hungered for, nonetheless.

She lowered herself onto the bed and stretched her arms out toward him, her mouth open, her eyes smiling.

Blood rushed about his head. He had no choice but to follow her down. Her whole body beckoned his. His whole body wanted her. This time, he led the kiss. Unlike the Warrior, G’raha was slow and careful, practiced and gentle. She respected his approach, cupping his cheeks with her hands. But the maddening heat of her chest just beneath his, the sight of her in nothing but her smallclothes - it was getting to him. He was boiling.

He bit her bottom lip, and she gasped, dragging her fingernails across his skin. At that, his hips came down with an aggression that embarrassed him - but he had to feel her, had to know. Her sex was warm and wet beneath the fabric. He broke their kiss and shuddered into her shoulder, her horns cool against the heat of his skin.

“I want you,” she said, trailing her hand down his chest, his abdomen, to the band of his smallclothes. Her finger slipped beneath and tugged. “Let me.”

“I - I can’t...hold back for long.” His breaths were hot and ragged.

“You don’t have to.” Her hand, so close, so ravenous. “I want to please you. G’raha.”

Somehow, though his head was reeling, he managed to strip himself of his remaining clothes and resume his position over her, lowering his head to her chest out of shyness. With one hand, she brushed his hair and scratched around his ears. The other teased him.

“Please,” he said, still hiding his face.

When he said her name, she wrapped her fingers around him and stroked him once.

His whole body tensed. He wasn’t sure how he survived.

Once he regained a semblance of composure, he pressed his lips over her neck and shoulders, panting between kisses.

She started working him with care. If he hadn’t been touching himself for the past month, he would have released already. Trying his best not to move, he soon found himself incapable of kissing. All of his energy went into holding himself back for as long as possible. What would she think of him if he - 

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “Give in.”

He moaned and clenched his eyes shut.

“Come for me.” Faster and faster she went, flicking from head to base and back.

Each stroke consumed more of his stamina, taking increasingly large increments of energy for him to resist the urge to thrust into her hand and be done with it. “My Warrior,” he said, groaning into her shoulder. “I think...I love you.”

She nuzzled her head against his and kissed his cheek, whispering something. But by then there was so much blood rushing in his ears, he couldn’t make it out.

He sank his teeth into her shoulder and rocked into her hand until everything was ringing. The way her thumb grazed his head, how she lingered halfway through each time - how it was _her_ after all these years, his Warrior, his inspiration, his _love_.

He bit harder and, thighs shaking with sweat, he came.

His seed landed on her forearm, her legs, her hip bones - he hated to think about it. But without thinking much, the rest of his body gave out and his full weight was against her. He rested his cheek against the wet spot his mouth had left.

“That...that is going to leave a mark,” she said, stroking his hair with her unsullied hand.

He lay there breathing through his mouth, eyes closed, tail waving lazily back and forth, back and forth...until it, too, ran out of energy. “My...my apologies.”


	9. i love you - haurchefant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Warrior of Light remembers another time someone told her he loved her.

He had said he loved her.

“I’m sorry.” She blinked. “You said you love me?”

“Yes.” His response bright and simple, like it was nothing.

“You plant your head between my legs and decide you love me? Is that your idea of romance?”

“Well, no. I decided long ago. But I wanted to tell you.” He rubbed his chin over her left thigh, lowering his eyelids. The light of the sun coming in through his window painted pictures on his pretty grey head. “Besides. Is there somewhere else you’d have me be? Other than where I am now?” A cheeky grin. “Between your legs?”

This man was a little devil, but the antithesis of her previous male partner. Yes, this one was a trickster, a fiend...a friend. She and the Elezen lay completely naked in his bed, apparently the most foolish and vulnerable knights in all Eorzea. She ran her thumbs over her knuckles and mumbled something. “N-no. You can stay.”

“Splendid.” He pushed himself forward on his elbows and kissed her belly button, inhaling slowly. “I _do_ love you so.”

His nose tickled her stomach, but her lips squirmed for another reason. “Are...are you not going to ask me if I love you, too?”

“Well, no.”

“Why not?”

He cocked his head to look up at her. “That would hardly be fair, would it? I’ve only just revealed my own feelings to you. If you _were_ to make a declaration, I’d not have it born of a compromising position.”

“Hmph.” She propped her feet upon his back. “Are you not, yourself, in a compromising position this very moment?”

“My darling, I think you’ve got it backwards.”

The next instant, his tongue was at her entrance, lapping, threatening at a leisurely pace. Before she could stop him, he brought a hand over her thigh and pressed down on her clit, circling it from above. An expert. A trickster, a fiend - a bastard.

“Ha...ah...aurchefant…”

“Such wonderful sounds you make.”

“Well, don’t stop now!”

“Mmm…”

He returned to his work. At first, she kept her head locked back against the bed frame, frozen in her first waves of arousal. After a while, though, she chanced to look down at him bobbing happily to please her. _Want_ ruled most of her brain - but a part of her couldn’t help but observe how unlike Estinien he looked, with his eyes closed peacefully, his brow unfurled. She bit her lip and stopped trying to restrain an involuntary wink.

Something in her hips - or perhaps a more intimate area of her body - must have alerted him to a change in her demeanor. Without stopping, he glanced up at her, regarded her scrunched expression, and smiled with his eyes. He planted his lips on her clit and shifted his arms to sit beneath her thighs - and pulled her hips forward.

She slid from the bed frame to recline totally with her forearm shielding her face.

He started rubbing his fingers across her wetness while he licked just above, every other lick more like a suck - a motion that made her pulse with the rhythm of his work. Estinien would have embarrassed her for having tells, but this was a man who loved what he was doing - loved _her_, if she took him as sincere.

“May I?” he asked, painting around her opening with his finger.

She nodded twice with fervor.

And he plunged inside.

“Ah...ah...ah…”

She squeaked at every motion. She could ask him to go faster, but she knew she would come far too quickly to escape his ministrations. There was something swelling within her besides pleasure. Something sweeter and bubblier. Something she never felt with Estinien.

“My sweet Warrior,” he said, gripping her thigh with his free hand. “So small you are.”

“C-c...compared to you.” Her voice cracked. She could hardly get it out.

“Hmm?”

He pulled himself away (the removal of his finger causing her some small amount of stress) and looked at her like he hadn’t been laboring for her bliss.

She peered at him from beneath her arm. “I said...compared to you. Your kind.”

“I heard you,” he said, drawing closer to her face. “But you...you’re crying.”

She was crying.

She _was_ crying. and he had known it from her other sounds.

“Haurchefant…” she said.

He responded with her name and set his hand upon her cheek. “What troubles you?”

“You,” she said, covering her face again and nudging his shoulder. “_You_ do. You damn fool.”

His shoulders relaxed a bit. “Pray tell...what is amiss? Have I hurt you?”

“Of _course_ I love you.” She pounded his chest once with each fist. “I love you. You absolute buffoon…”

He did not smile. Instead, he put his thumb under her lip before closing the distance with a simple kiss. After, he touched his forehead to hers and let the heat radiate between them.

“All is well,” he said.

It was. Then.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am dead, pls play Pyramid Song by Radiohead at my funeral.


	10. like a scholar - crystal exarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sensation gives the Exarch the confidence boost he needs to take charge.

The whole thing reminded him of the Isle of Val. Giggling, blushing, afterglow attempts to clean up one and one’s partner. The clumsiness of sex coupled with the chance of getting caught.

The thrill of getting caught.

Despite his less-than-graceful return to sexual activity, the Crystal Exarch felt more like G’raha Tia than he had since...well…becoming the Crystal Exarch.

The Warrior had already slipped beneath the covers by the time he returned to the bed. She stared up at him with her hands clasped over her chest. Twas a warm sight he could certainly get used to. He ran his fingers through her bangs and smiled with his eyes half closed.

She yawned - perhaps _faked_ a yawn. “You said you think you love me,” she said. “Is it true?”

His shoulders tensed. “Did I?”

“Yes Just before you - “

“Ah.” As a student, he had gone through the ugly process of learning to control one’s whisperings, the words one spoke before succumbing to the tide. It would appear he’d have to relearn as an old man. “Perhaps I remember...saying something to that effect.” He looked to the ceiling. “I hope I haven’t made you uncomfortable.”

“Not in the slightest. Won’t you join me?” She lowered the covers.

He tried not to ogle her breasts.

“Au Ra are not known to be particularly adept at cuddling...but I have had success in the past.”

He joined her in bed, knowing it was only a matter of time before he was hard again. Perhaps he’d have a chance to redeem himself. If she would have him. There were many things he hoped to accomplish. And he hoped to accomplish them many times.

They lay about a fulm apart, he on his side, she propping herself up with her elbow and openly drinking in his appearance. How he must have looked for her to make that hungry expression.

“I think I might love you, too,” she said without a hint of fear. “But I think we should refrain from making decisions so early in our time together. And so addled with lust.”

He had made the decision ages ago, but kept quiet. “Are you...addled, then?”

“Quite. The way you stare at my chest is...driving me mad.”

Ah. He _had_ been staring, then? Once again, his sense of reason began filtering to a certain part of his body. It had scarcely been half a bell, if that, since his last release. Once or twice over the past moon he had brought himself to climax in relatively quick succession, when he couldn’t block her image from his mind.

Now she was before him. Theoretically, he should have even _more_ vitality than ever.

“You are,” he started, “quite a sight to behold.”

“Mhmm.” She chuckled. “Perhaps you should quit _be_-holding and start _holding_?” The cover slid down her shoulder, further exposing her blushing breasts. “Unless...you’d like to watch me touch myself?”

Twelve have mercy. He was ready.

-

The Warrior was riding high. She was one of those who could shirk her fears for hours granted a single success, and making G’raha come was nothing if not that. She prayed blasphemously for his stamina.

“That mirror of yours,” she said, cupping her breast. “The portal. Its magics allow you to watch another person, yes?”

He rolled his head into the bed. Only one of his eyes was visible, and oh, what a pretty red painted his cheeks. “Are you accusing me of some impropriety, my Warrior?”

“I’m simply wondering why you never asked for a closer look.”

He spoke her name into the pillow. “You know I never…” His voice caught and he pushed his face deeper into the fabric, shaking his head. “Your private moments remained just that...but I admit...your image alone often stirs certain thoughts within me. And...sometimes they come to fruition.”

“Don’t hide your face. I want you to see.”

The bed muffled his laugh, but he turned sure enough. His crystal fingers were gripping the sheets already, his eyebrows turned up. “Your visage is enough to bring a man to tears.”

She sat up and let her hands rest atop her breasts. “G’raha…”

“I want you more than I can stand.” He used all his air to say it and had to take a few moments to gain some composure. “All I ask is that you are gentle with me. There is much I have yet to remember.”

The sincerity of his plea softened her confidence. What she was dealing with here was no Estinien. In fact, his words almost reminded her of her own - uttered to her lost lover at Camp Dragonhead what seemed like lifetimes ago.

_Be gentle with me_.

The thought overflowed her with passion, and she had no choice but to cup his head in her hands and kiss him once - as Haurchefant had once kissed her - before pulling back and saying:

“All the world’s time is ours to take.”

The smile she wore grew so big she closed her eyes to accommodate it.

G’raha mouthed her name while reaching towards the scales of her cheek, caressing them with the back of his hand. “I trust you.”

Shuffling the covers over her back, she moved to straddle him with her hips centered just above his groin. She knew if she _felt_ him, she’d be unable to resist the urge to _mount_ him - and she wanted to make sure he was ready.

She placed her thumb beneath his lip and kissed him with the patience of a saint, waiting until she felt his tongue on her lips before leaning deeper and opening wide. He was cautious but deliberate - tracing the corners of her mouth as though he needed to know they were there.

She moved her hand to cup his head and found herself gripping behind his ear. He inhaled and jerked into her hand.

She broke the kiss and blinked at him.

“More,” he begged. Then, noting her hesitance, he peered at her with one eye open. “You’ve not...with a Miqo’te?”

She shook her head. “Your ears are...quite sensitive, then?”

“I’m almost afraid to say yes.”

She pecked his forehead and propped her elbows aside his head. The position suited her purposes like a glove. From there, her breasts hung just over his face and she had perfect access to -

“Ahhhhh…”

The sound of his pleasure curled her lips, even as she nibbled the tip of his ear. It felt a bit silly at first, but soon she found it rewarding.

When she moved to address his other ear, he gripped her breasts and held them together.

“Raha!”

The name slipped out - she hadn’t been thinking - but he groaned into her chest. “Yes,” he said, readying his mouth at her nipple. “Gods, how I’ve wanted to hear that.”

Her strength waned when he started tonguing her, groping her like a fiend. She’d thought herself of enough constitution to withstand his hands upon her - but no. Her mouth hung open, and for a time she abandoned all thoughts of pleasuring him. All thoughts, period.

“Raha…”

His lips popped around over her swollen nipple when he released her. “Kiss me.”

She reared back and obliged, spit dripping from her lips. One hand pushed her face harder against him - the crystal hand pressed against her ass, encouraging her hips to grind against him, finally. Who was she to resist the madness taking root in her new lover? How could she, with his teeth courting her lips?

His crystal hand crept closer, threatening her opening. “Forgive me,” he said, ripping his lips from hers. “I must.”

He slipped beneath her smallclothes and _easily_ found what he wanted.

She crashed upon his chest, all but her hips which sought only closeness to his hand. She hoped her horns weren’t aggravating him.

The crystal was cold inside her and she _lived_ for it. When she rolled her eyes up, she saw him smiling with his mouth open, unaware of her gaze. Laughing, he took his other hand from her head and sat it just above her tail to massage its base.

She tensed around his fingers and sang for him.

“Ah…” he breathed. “I will...remember your reaction.”

“You had better.”

He kept at it, eventually adding another crystal finger to her slit. Her nails left red marks in his skin where she clung to him for purchase, using his body to rock against his hand. The rushes came faster and faster. She’d never be able to touch herself again, having known such solid pleasure.

She held her breath and waited, listening to the debauched sounds of his fingers pushing in and out of her arousal.

“I’m ready,” he said, bringing his hands away. “Show me.”

She winced at the sudden parting and forced herself up, forced her smallclothes off, though her limbs were shaking.

Maybe it was love. Maybe it was lust. But looking down at him then, she thought she was soon to mount the most beautiful man in all the worlds. The sweat on his brow, the pained concentration of his eyes...his open mouth...

By then, she knew her smile was pitiful. How she wanted to tell him she loved him. How she wanted to break her own promise. But she wouldn’t. Not yet.

She shifted back atop his body and found his length. He bit his lip when she stroked it once, twice. A courtesy test. Then she set herself atop it and relaxed her thighs until he’d entered her completely.

His hands went straight for the sheets, clutching in time with his grunt. She came forward and scratched at his chest. Could he tell she was coming around him? That simply _being_ inside her was enough to send her spiraling, so ready was she?

Hot breath kissed his chest. She shifted her hips up and down by ilms to disguise her pulsing sex as the motion of love making.

It was apparently enough to light his fire.

“I can do this,” he said with wild eyes. “Let me try.”

She couldn’t manage a _yes_ or _gods yes_ \- but she could nod her head and slump over, giving him just enough leverage to flip her to her back and switch positions.

Soon, he sat with his member at her entrance, his left hand hovering over her breast. And his face?

His face gave her absolute faith in his ability to fuck her halfway to the Source and back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it hot in here or is it just me?
> 
> My irl spouse is giving me weird looks, I think he's onto us...


	11. religion - crystal exarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oooooooooooooooooooookay.
> 
> So this was fun. Uhhhh. Chapter ten.
> 
> Wherein the Crystal Exarch asks the Warrior of Light to be gentle, only to find himself incapable of resisting the call to take charge.

For decades he had longed for darkness, but when he felt himself enter the Warrior, all he felt was _sunlight, glorious sunlight._

The purity of pleasure nigh blinded him with white. Color danced back into his vision as he doubled over and panted, hoping his display of vulnerability hadn’t spoiled her conception of him as strong, as beloved, as _worthy_.

As the shock subsided, he opened his eyes to a blushing, bare-chested Au Ra - visions of whom had plagued him for the past month, stirring him to impurity at any and all hours. Now _he_ held a position of power, and he could read it on her face. She would let him write the story. For as long as he could last, the pen was in his hands.

Literally - her breasts were in his hands. He grabbed them harder than he’d dared before, feeling like a highbrow lecher, and watched her arch her back in pleasure-pain. _Gods_ her lips mouthed. No sound came. As he groped, he flicked over her nipples with his thumbs. Each time she twitched and let out a tiny noise, spurring him on, spurring him to push deeper inside her.

His body screamed at him to _fuck_ but he wanted to wait until he was grinding his teeth together before letting go. He brought his chest close to her, felt the points of her breasts bob against him, and locked her head between his arms. How _mad_ he must look, how feverish, with his hot breath baring the suggestion of her name. Such a creature, he was. No longer Exarch nor man.

Using her shoulders to brace himself, he pushed and pushed until he felt he could go no farther. Beneath him, she writhed at his approach, pushing her nails into his back until her arms gave out and fell to the covers. The pleasure pulled his gaze upwards, like he was praying to the gods.

“Raha,” she cried half-mindedly.

Without looking back down, he slipped his left thumb into her mouth and sighed when he felt her sucking on it. He wasn’t sure why he did it, but _gods_ he was glad he had. The pull of her lips compounded the pressure on his cock.

“I’m...going to move…”

Some part of him had enough courtesy to warn her. It wasn’t his own voice he heard, but the voice of a kinder man who knew nothing of beasthood.

But this first time - this first time in centuries - G’raha would fuck like an animal, even if the shame killed him later.

-

_So much for 'be gentle with me.'_

As his first and second thrusts set an ambitious pace, the Warrior clenched her teeth on G’raha’s thumb, keeping her wet tongue pressed against it like she’d get rocked into oblivion without something to hold onto.

Of course, her body was hanging onto him just fine - he had spread her so completely that he had already hit her deepest point and kept hitting it again and again and again. Looking down (with the one eye she managed to keep open) she watched her cunt take him in each time, hard with aggression but easy with her arousal.

Then she looked up at G’raha. She felt like prey. She felt like _praying_ to this wild-eyed man who’d suddenly appeared to mount her: _harder, harder, harder._

Like he had divined her body’s begging, he sat up a bit straighter and eyed her breasts. With a whip of his tail, he hoisted her leg upon his shoulder and slowed his pace mercifully, biting his lip as he watched, red-faced, the motions of her chest adhering to his rhythm.

The new position opened her up even more. She twisted her arms against the covers, mouth frozen open as a second climax built within her. How? _How?_ She would chase each and every orgasm he gave her.

“I want you in all ways,” he spoke in a gasp. “I want you in every way. My Warrior.” His crystal arm gripped her leg tight.

_Have me_, she meant to say, but his free hand had made its way to her clit, pushing hard - pushing the breath out of her lungs. She craved release.

“Will you beg?” he said, fucking her all the while. “Forgive me. I must hear it. Please.”

“Raha!” No thinking. Just answer. Anything to feel his work. Sweat pooled at the base of her spine. Air rushed under her when she arched, though it was little chill to the fire of her flesh. Her chest heaved between words. “Please, Raha, move me!”

He clenched his eyes shut, and for a moment she thought he would come - but instead he laughed thrice, in time with his lust-charged thrusts, picking up pace again. Slowly, he pulled his hand from her hips and licked his fingers - only to circle her clit with the patience of a man who’d waited for centuries to feel her from the inside.

It was enough.

Again, she pulsed around him, stronger this time. As slow as he was, she found herself straining to meet his finger, his cock with greater force as she rode out her orgasm in the white heat of pleasure. Her body melted into the bed. She was spent. She was through. That - was her limit.

G’raha released - his breath, not his seed. “I’m sorry,” he said, letting her leg fall. “I must continue.”

She groaned in total submission to the man who was now working to set her on her belly. A puddle of well-pleasured muscle, she obeyed his heavy hands and gasped when their bodies separated during the transition.

He took a moment. What did he see? Her swollen, dripping entrance? Her thighs glistening with sweat? Her shaking elbows, barely capable of holding up her wobbling form?

It must have pleased him.

The G’raha that cradled over her felt gentler, more familiar. Now that his mouth was at her neck, she could hear his stunted breaths and she knew he was trying to hold himself back. The crystal arm held the bulk of his weight while his left traced marks on her body - scars, scales, and points of pleasure.

Eventually, he worked his hand to her ass, then to that pulsing place between her legs. He pressed his palm against her and moved back and forth, from her clit, to her tail, where his fingers lingered and squeezed - then down and back again.

She dropped her head to the bed. “Raha...you have...driven the warrior out of me…”

A finger pressed inside her and she shuddered. “Nonsense,” he said. “You are yet a force of nature...and I...merely rising to meet you.”

She laughed the stunted laugh of lust. “You can try.”

The finger disappeared and was soon replaced by something more substantial.

Both of them hissed as they breathed. Her body let him move so easily within and without. She had no choice but to rear herself against his hips and sway. Sweat kissed sweat where their skin came together.

“Just a little longer,” he said, cupping her breast. “I...I promise.”

“Touch me,” she rasped. “Touch me again. I want you.”

Lips smushed into her shoulder blades, muffling the speech of her new lover as he reached to rub her clit again. “I will...withdraw...when I - “

“No,” she said. “Please, trust me. Inside.”

Hot air spread over her back with his sigh. “I mustn’t...you can’t...are you certain?”

“P-please. I won’t be able to...to say it again.” As his fingers worked, her hips began to buckle. She was building once more. She could already feel this release would be different. Her lips trembled to think of the mess she was about to make, the mess they had likely already made.

Her name slipped from his lips and he fucked her faster. The once-fluid motions of his fingers became awkward, jerky, and she whimpered in a chase for pressure.

He inhaled and held it, concentrating. Then he huffed out: “I am...close…”

“Raha…”

He let go of her, using both hands to brace himself on the bed. How she longed to see his labored face, his hard-bitten lip, his blushing face. That image spurred her to touch herself - she couldn’t help it - as they both approached release.

He must have seen it, for he groaned and worked into her as he hadn’t before.

And in the end, he came first, letting out a mighty grunt. With his seed pouring into her in waves, she found bliss a third time. Soon, the fruit of his pleasure and hers was trickling down her inner thighs, pooling on the sheets while they shook and breathed through open mouths. She kept rubbing until it hurt and her fingers were slick with the fluids of sex.

Neither of them expected to move, but she couldn’t help but twitch into and around him. He gasped each time until finally - nigh painfully - he slipped out of her cunt and fell onto the bed at her side. She whimpered and crumbled next to him.

Time beat slowly. Envisioning a future without a cast of sweat or the musk of sex enveloping her was nigh impossible in her moments of recovery.

G’raha spoke first, though still short of breath. “I...I beg you to forgive me.” He hid his face on the bed.

“Forgive you?” It was not a warrior’s voice, but a lover’s.

“To have done such things…” Was he crying?” “To have treated you so...after asking you for softness.”

She rolled over and propped her head up on her elbows. With her remaining strength, she reached for his shoulder.

He turned and met her gaze.

“I loved every moment of it,” she said. “Every moment of you.”

He laughed like he was trying to make himself feel better. She hoped he _did_ feel better. After all the things he’d made her feel.

“You have brought me more happiness than I had any right to feel in this body,” he said, reaching out to her. “I would spend the rest of my days in your presence...if you would have me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't say I've ever felt like such a sinner.
> 
> Also I officially have 100+ kudos on this work and I'm so thankful...I have never shared any kind of writing like this before and I feel so welcomed in with you lot of debauchees. Please, if there is anything I could do (write) for you...any odd request or inkling...please let me know.
> 
> I am the type who is willing to do homework! Bless you all for reading.


	12. a temporary current - plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter 11** \- Aymeric worries about the Warrior of Light while she's, unbeknownst to him, basking in the light of new-found love. The Exarch finds himself prying into the Warrior's past so he can understand her present better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a feels-before-fuck chapter.

Of all the colors clouding Aymeric’s thoughts, the Warrior’s shone brightest.

War, battle, paperwork, Estinien - all muted against the vibrant red that floated through his mind if he chanced to hear her name or even wander through a place he had seen her.

Before him was plenty enough to worry about, but he barely understood the situation she and the Scions had perhaps overcome, and were perhaps _still_ working to rectify. It shamed him to admit he would have begged for answers, had he found himself able.

Instead, he found himself busy. What comforted him was the knowledge that she was safe, for now. They had told him that much.

Still, he wondered whether she would manage to track him down and tell him herself. He communicated his location constantly with all he encountered who could claim connections to the Scions, such that his whereabouts were no mystery.

Perhaps had...something changed?

Perhaps he was remiss in interpreting her feelings for him as anything more than temporary in the first place. Those simple nights where she held him and he held her, those nights rightly ruined each night that followed, without her at his side. And while intimacy had _never_ been his priority, it had certainly been a while since he’d last - 

“Milord.”

Aymeric turned to his faithful second-in-command, who was eyeing his sword hand with suspicion.

“Your knuckles are white,” Lucia said. “What troubles thee?”

He let go of his hilt and flexed his fingers, sighing. A half-truth would do just fine. He was no good at lying. “Though we have much to hold our attention here,” he said, “I confess my thoughts drift often to the Warrior of Light and the Scions.”

“Ah.” She bowed her head. If he’d seen her eyes, he may have been able to discern whether she believed him. “I am certain we will hear more of what has transpired since last we met soon enough.”

“You are certainly right…”

“Until then...we may both rest easy, knowing our friend is most capable of handling what comes her way.”

Lucia was right. She was painfully right.

He twisted his lips, understanding full well how selfish he was for wanting to be leaned on.

_

In the Tower, the Exarch and the Warrior let their fingers kiss while they lay next to each other cooling down. Nothing touched but their hands. Neither had thought to dress. Why would they? They were yet basking in their newly iterated affection. And what's more - it was hot.

“Curse this heat,” he said. “When all I want to do is hold you.”

“The Tower has no remedy?”

He laughed. “I’m trying, but...we are linked, after all.”

“If only we were in Coerthas. We could go about it for days before warming up.”

“Ah.” He pursed his lips. Fingers still entwined with hers, he looked to the ceiling. “I...never had the pleasure.”

“The pleasure?”

“Of visiting Coerthas with you. Perhaps you don’t recall but...in another life I suggested we visit together.”

She was silent, probably straining to remember, though far less time had passed for her.

He continued. “The Ishgard I came upon after awakening had little in common with the one you knew, I’m certain.” _The one I’ve read about you knowing_. “I regret not having pressured you further. I’d have liked to see its happier days. Prior to the end of the world.”

“When first we met, their days weren’t so happy as you presume,” she said, pulling her hand away to wipe her brow. “Remember, they had yet to end their war against Dravania.”

He clenched his fingers. “Forgive me,” he said. “My sense of time...it’s a bit…”

“I was not so respected among Ishgardians as I am now, either,” she said. “Twas not enough to simply share the mantle of Azure Dragoon. There was much I had to suffer before most were willing to accept me.”

_Most_, he thought. _It came easier for some, didn’t it?_

Why did he long to know? Why did he ache to understand her intimate past? For ages he had speculated on the nature of her relationship to another figure history remembered. For her, that wound had likely yet to close...but how deeply had it cut? Could he help her, or was he arrogant to presume he could do anything but hurt the healing process?

“In truth,” she said after a while, “I am a bit afraid to return to Ishgard. As kind as they have been to me.”

To his relief, she scooted closer, so her neck sat just over his forearm. He twisted his fingers through her sweat-wetted hair, and she leaned into his ministrations, still looking upward.

“The Fortemps,” she said. “And others I can scarcely bear the thought of seeing. I am truly terrified.” With what almost looked like fear in her eyes, she turned towards him, minding her horns. “I’m not certain...what all you’ve heard…”

Her lip quivered and he couldn’t live with himself any longer.

Speaking her name, he sat up and held each of her shoulders. “Not as much as I need to have heard,” he said, “if I’m to be a proper friend and...l-lover to you.”

She raised herself slightly with her elbows. “Raha…”

“I know enough to understand...how fresh your painful memories may be.” He looked down, feeling silly for saying such serious things while naked. “I beg of you...if there is aught I might do to help...I would know it.”

The corner of her lip turned up - but so did her eyebrows. “I am...certain you have your own sorrows.”

He nodded. “I may. But chances are we may find commonality and thus some sense of closure. I want to _be_ with you, and I - ” He inhaled, bracing himself to look upon her face again. There she was - eyes alight with emotion. He would stay strong and finish his damn sentences. “It’s just - it would be wrong of me - _unspeakably_ wrong of me - to base my understanding of your experiences on what I’ve read in history books.”

Two sounds filtered from her lips before she slumped her shoulders and covered her eyes with her hand. He started to apologize, but she waved him off. “I feel as though I should...thank you,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek and smiling. “Though I am not sure how articulate I would be...and it could take quite a while…”

As he was filled to the brim with empathy, he felt his own eyes holding back water. “It’s as you said. All the world’s time is ours to take. For now, at least.”

She set his hand upon her cheek and closed her eyes. "I have...a strange request."

"Yes?"

"Might we return to Xande's throne? I should...like to see the stars. And I think the breeze may do us some good."

He saw no reason to deny her. No reason save one. "We would have to clothe ourselves once more."

"Perhaps," she said. Laughter sent her shoulders up and down. "But who knows what could happen once we've settled in?"

His tail twitched, and for the nth time that day he questioned whether he was still sleeping after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YES the chapter title is stolen from E3N. Does anyone have a piss-poor sleep schedule so we can make a static and do savage together? Rip me, working third shift.
> 
> Next chapter will be spicy...


	13. spell in waiting - plot/estinien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Chapter 12** \- The Crystal Exarch gains a more personal knowledge of history and of the Warrior of Light. In a flashback, Estinien and the Warrior explore a potentially bad decision. Grief does silly things to a person, and a person's judgment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW in the back half here. Alcohol mentioned, drunkenness experienced.

They sat that night atop Xande’s throne weighted into one another. To G’raha, skin against skin was yet an unfamiliar and humbling sensation. The way he pressed his nose, his cheeks into her, told her how much he had wanted for physical affection. She had no impulse to tease him for being too shy to ask. Instead, she held him tighter and strained her ears, hoping to catch his gentle hums.

She told him of the Ul’dahn Revolution while he’d laid his head in her lap. Although thinking on it usually made her want to squirm, she took great pleasure in undoing her lover’s braid and running her hands through his hair. Ilberd’s treachery, Alphinaud’s naivete - all of it was so far away from that special place. The bloodshed did little to quicken her heart.

“I feel I came so close to that pivotal point in history,” he said, eyes closed. “To think: just a few weeks before the Sultana’s would-be assassination, I was bidding you farewell.”

“Be thankful you missed it,” she said. “Much was lost. Everything was changed.”

“And this is what sent you to Coerthas? To Ishgard?” He twitched his ear, likely hoping it would convince her to scratch around it.

She took the hint and he leaned into her ministrations. “Yes...well…perhaps you know...”

“I beg you...tell the story as you would to a friend, not a historian.”

Her hands stopped moving and she willed her way through a frown. “I will try.” It wouldn’t be so hard, would it? Months had passed since the worst of it, though ghosts liked to float through in waves. “I’m afraid I have found the clinical version much easier to tell in days past…”

G’raha shifted his position so he could look up at her from her lap. He had kind and gentle eyes, an even gentler hand, which he dispatched to her cheek. “I’d not have you strain yourself. However you are able - that shall do.”

“I’d _like_ to strain myself for your benefit. For _our_ benefit. There are things...I’ve yet to tell a single soul.” She knew she’d have to work her way there if she meant to tell him those things. She’d have to cry and hope he had the decency to let her. Well, she didn’t have to hope much. Always had he proven himself considerate of her feelings.

“Well…” His lips were so smooth, so shapely - almost like a woman’s. “Though I’m well aware I have little room to talk...I have found relief in letting go of self-imposed secrets.”

She smirked. “I think you’re exactly the man, in truth.”

He blushed and returned to his original position, facing away from her. She went back to rubbing around his ears.

On the throne, the wind didn’t seem as powerful as it had during the day. The chill was enough to soothe their tired bodies, enough to comfort her. She thought if she’d felt any less at home, she may not have been able to continue.

“I had,” she said, “a dear friend. Without his influences, tis like I never would have gone to Ishgard proper.”

“You speak of...the Fortemps?”

“One in particular…”

Did he know his name? How much had history included? Uncertain whether she wanted him to say it or if she’d speak it herself, G’raha surprised her by reaching for her hand and squeezing it.

“You speak of Haurchefant,” he said. “Of the Silver Fuller.”

She watched his mouth move but could say nothing.

“History remembers him as your greatest companion. One of your era’s finest heroes and...most unfortunate losses.”

Already she felt cracks in her confidence, like her light-broken vitality of days past. “Yes…” she managed to say. “We were...close.”

“Forgive me,” he said, raising himself from her lap, not quite looking her in the eye. Both of his hands minded a strand of his hair that had slipped over his shoulder. “Would you say history has the right of it?”

“Well, we…”

What to say? What to avoid?

“He had become…”

The Scions knew some. Not all. Aymeric knew more, Estinien the most, as it happened. But there was one secret she had kept even from her fellow Dragoon, one thing he had yet to wring from her.

“He wanted…_we_ wanted…”

She looked at G’raha now. His eyebrows were knitted in sincerity, his lips just parted, his eyes offering plenty of room for sorrow. His eyes said _I can handle it, whatever it may be. I can handle you._

A defensive measure - she couldn’t help but laugh and pull her legs to her chest. It was a painful laugh, reminiscent of that final smile she had no choice but to offer her lost love in his final moments. The final moments of a life she yet longed for, even as another man beheld her.

But _this_ man - his face, she decided, was telling the truth. She could never be _too much_ for him. And if he grew distant upon learning the truth, well...she’d be better off looking elsewhere anyway.

She looked at him. “He offered me a ring. I...I took it.”

-

_There it was_.

How long had she lived with this miscarried hope rotting her from the inside? Not by bells or by moons, but by ages she had suffered in grief? G’raha spoke her name the moment the confession rolled from her lips. When she bowed her head to wipe her tears, he took the opportunity to take her into his arms.

He pretended to be as young and strong as he looked. He wanted her to feel safe. “This...this is what you have kept to yourself,” he said with his lips pressed into the part of her hair.

“Yes,” she sobbed. “I wore the ring but one night...wanted to surprise his father...the war…”

It was enough for him to piece it together. He’d not dare ask a hurting person to repeat herself, not this first time anyway. As for his own feelings, he didn’t feel better or worse for knowing - not for any personal reason. The rawness of her pain was pain enough.

And as she cried into his chest, his empathy got the better of him. Soon a tear or two trailed from his own eyes, though she couldn’t see them. He braced her with his crystal arm and let his other trail through her hair. This comforting posture felt familiar to him - to him the _Exarch_.

And to G’raha Tia?

Did it trouble him that she and Haurchefant had so recently been betrothed? Yes. For one reason only:

Was he...taking advantage of her?

-

“Take me...take me to Aymeric.”

“Aye.That’s my intent.”

“Please don’t...drop me…”

Estinien grunted. _Drop her_. He’d be lucky if he could walk straight, much less make it back to the manor with the Warrior in his hands. He wore his alcohol far better than she, but they’d been going for quite some time at the tavern. The only reason the bartender hadn’t cut them off, he thought, was her status as the Warrior of Light...and perhaps his as Azure Dragoon.

At least the Warrior _was_ light.

“How...how far…”

He bit his tongue to keep himself from laughing. “We’ve only just left.”

“You’ll have to...the rooftops…”

“Aye, Dragoon. The rooftops.”

He had no intention of using the rooftops. He _did_ do his best to avoid areas where they were more likely to be seen. After all Ishgard had been through, his own reputation wasn’t exactly sterling, but he knew the Warrior had something worth losing. Besides, she wasn’t lucid enough to realize he was doing something nice for her.

By the time he’d plodded all the way to Aymeric’s manor, she’d grown heavy in his arms. He trudged up to the door and kicked once, twice, nearly losing his balance.

“Is he home?” the Warrior asked. The sound must have roused her.

Estinien eyed the candle-lit window on the second story. He usually preferred that entrance, but better safe than sorry. “Aye. He’s home.”

“Edmont isn’t here?”

It was so late it was nearly morning. Of _course_ the Count wasn’t there. It seemed her heart was drunk, too. “No. He is not.”

“I can’t let him...well, you know...seeing me like this, and all that…” Her voice trailed off.

A light bobbed through the glasswork on the manor door and soon the Lord himself appeared with a lantern in his hand and a hint of slumber in his pretty blue eyes. He waved the pair in.

“No servants?” Estinien asked, entering.

“Your voice carries,” Aymeric said. He was wearing a blue robe, casual for him but grand for an adventurer’s standards. “I was awake...and I thought I should tend to my honored guests personally.”

“Yes well, would you mind taking this one off me?” He held the Warrior out and started working his boots off.

Aymeric took the woman and squinted. “It must be later than I thought if you’ve managed to knock _that_ many back.”

“I’m awake,” she said with her eyes closed.

“I...see.”

Estinien had managed to wrangle his boots off, but that, the alcohol, and the walk had taken most of his stamina. “To your quarters. She’s hopeless.”

“Right.”

After Aymeric had set her on his bed, they worked off her boots and belt, her shabby trousers. They replaced her heavy vest with one of Aymeric’s silken tunics and set her in the middle of the bed. After a little conversation between the two Elezen, the manor’s master decided he ought to see himself to sleep as well, almost as though he’d been awaiting their arrival. He blew out his candle, and he and his companion took up space on either side of the Warrior. 

The arrangement was comfortable. The three of them had adopted it before, usually after another sort of interaction. Sure, Estinien had had his fun with the Warrior when she began training under Alberic, but she ultimately became his friend's primary interest. The trio had a great deal of _chemistry_, he might say. But he had never doubted the true partnership was between the Warrior and the Lord Commander. Inevitably, they would realize this and stop seeking his carnal companionship.

Estinien woke to the sounds of Aymeric dressing himself. He raised himself on the bed and grunted out what he hoped sounded like a question.

“I’ll return by mid-morning,” Aymeric said so as not to wake the still-resting Warrior. He tightened his belt. “Stay longer than you’d like, if you would. I pray you...mind her, as well.”

“Hm.” The Dragoon fell back on the bed, a mess of hair and headache. Aymeric left not long after.

At first, Estinien thought he’d nod off as quickly as he’d woken, but no sooner had he closed his eyes, than the Warrior stirred at his side. She blinked her eyes open and rolled to look at him, her horns forcing her head to rest at what others might consider an awkward angle. “How...bad…?” she said, her voice hoarse.

“You...looked a fair mess.”

“Ah.” She rolled and set her face on the pillow. “I...shame him.”

“He doesn’t mind.”

The instant he spoke the words, he realized she wasn’t talking about Aymeric. The silence that followed made him want to scratch that itch that told him always to leave, to forge a path elsewhere. But he stayed.

“Aymeric has left?” she asked.

He felt like he was allowed to breathe again. “Not long ago.”

“I see.” Her shoulders fell. After breathing through the pillow a few more times, she returned to her original position. Now her eyes were open. They were literally open, but Estinien also felt they were open in another sense, too; she was allowing him to read her completely.

“I am...so lonely, Estinien.”

He pursed his lips. “Mm.”

“Won’t you...hold me, this morning? Pretend you are warmer than you are? If you care.”

He did care. He valued her companionship, her presence. But he said nothing. Actions ought speak well enough. He wrapped his arm around and drew her closer to his chest. This kind of intimacy was not entirely new to him, but with _her_ it felt un-sacred. It tasted like betrayal. Still, he tasted.

The tip of her nose nudged his collarbone and made his heart race. Was he yet drunk? Was she? He was too old to feel nigh giddy from a simple touch. If Aymeric had been there, the small things would not have felt so blasphemous.

“Estinien…” Her voice was little, whining, wanting. And when he cast his eyes down, he knew exactly what she wanted.

Through all their debauchery, they never kissed until that day.

_It is a test,_ he thought, _and soon she’ll recognize it for what it is: wrong._

But she kept testing. _She_ was the one who pushed harder, who let her tongue onto his lips and into his mouth. _She_ was the one who reached around his neck and willed him to roll over, to straddle her. Was he imagining it? No. The instant he tried to pull back, she whined and pulled him harder, wrapped a leg around his waist.

His body responded as bodies did, yes. He was _very_ aware of the tent in his smallclothes. But as they kissed, he couldn’t so much as keep his eyes closed for fear of committing some type of sin, some impropriety. Had he not already?

All the things they had done together long ago - he had done it because he once assumed she’d take her leave of Ishgard, of the lance as many others had. What did it matter if they sinned for a while?

But now she was different. A friend. Aymeric’s friend and prospect. _A dead man’s lover._

He wrenched himself away. “You don’t want this.”

“I don’t know what I want.” She was breathing hard. “But right now I know I want this.” She tugged at his silver hair.

“You _want_,” he said. “But you do not want _me_.”

“I want you this very moment.” Her hands were at his cheeks.

“You do _not_.”

“Is it because of Aymeric?” Her brows turned upwards. “Is it because of...because of…”

“It’s because of _you_.” She had her fingernails on the skin of his neck. He wished he could have tossed her to the side but...he did not. “You remain a bleeding wound, and I refuse to help you keep tearing yourself open.”

“And what are you?” She said it ugly. “That you drink with me, share a bed with me, but can’t kiss me when I tell you I need it?”

“What you are asking for is not a kiss. This, in Aymeric’s house, in his bed, in his clothes.”

“You think he loves me? And for that reason you are afraid to ask yourself whether you feel the same way?”

Oh, he hated her in that moment. He flared his nostrils in disgust and looked away.

She jerked his head back. “Once,” she said. “Let us _once_. Then shall we know.”

A kiss was not what started him again. It was her leg that had long been resting around his waist. It only took a little encouraging for him to draw his hips down and show her how hard he’d become. Despite his frustration, it pleased him to see her wince at the sudden pressure.

He decided - if they were going to fuck, he’d try to fuck her like he’d fuck anyone else - without sentiment, if he could manage.

“Are you going to boss me around?” she said.

He put one hand over her mouth and used the other to free himself of his smallclothes. “Won’t have to.”

On his palm, he could feel her trying to speak, but he wouldn’t let himself listen. Instead, he drew his hand to her thighs and moved the fabric aside. The wetness surprised him - scared him? Could it be she truly wanted him that badly?

But ah - that was a distraction.

He stroked himself a few times and let her watch him set his cock at her entrance. It wouldn’t be the first time she had taken it in, but it would be the first time she had taken him _there_ instead of her mouth.

Estinien’s eyes glazed over. Of the other Elezen who had had her - how did he compare? He knew, of course, where Aymeric ranked, but what of Haurchefant? The thought made his lip twitch, that vanity could be so indiscriminate, so cold. He hadn’t known the man as well as he should have, and now he did him dirty. It nearly ruined his spirit.

But she bucked beneath him, ignorant of his idle thoughts. A beg, if he’d ever seen one.

He pushed his tip inside and waited to feel her hot breath against his palm. Then he pressed further and brought his chest to hers so he could look her in the eye.

“When I remove this hand,” he said, “try to stay quiet.”

She nodded.

He set that hand up her shirt - Aymeric’s shirt - so he could rub her breasts while he began to move. At first he was slow, that dreadful sentiment building up again, but as she arched and strained, his nature took over.

Did it feel wrong because it was right? Fucking his fellow Azure Dragoon? Or did it feel wrong because it was wrong?

If he fucked her hard enough, he could convince his cock not to care. He sat straight and grabbed her thighs, pulling her so he could hit her deeper, faster. As his speed increased, the sound of her voice grew. She tried to use her own hands to cover her mouth, but it was useless. What Aymeric’s serving staff would divulge to their master, Estinien knew not, but they would certainly harbor suspicions.

“You’re going to - make me come - “

She could hardly say it. The words sent a hot chill through his spine and made him want to fuck like his lance depended on it, but his principles got the better of him.

“No.”

He slid out and leaned back on his elbows. It hurt him, but it was worth hearing her wince, seeing her oft-stoic face turn feeble. Her lips trembled in protest.

“Well,” he said. “You started this, so it’s yours to finish.”

“Mine?”

“Yours.”

He leaned back and looked at the ceiling. The setting was too pretty, too fine, for their crude and sudden coupling. The bed shifted as she worked her way toward him, and soon her tiny hands were pressed against his chest.

He grabbed them.

"Can you do it, Dragoon?"

"I will…"

She rubbed herself on his cock, and he kept her wrists together. While she prepared to ride him properly, he wondered what would happen if Aymeric walked in? Would he be pleasantly surprised? Or wounded?

The thought of wounding his friend made his eyes wide.

No.

That’s not what did it. It was the realization that feeling her mount him was _more important_ than Aymeric's feelings, if indeed her harbored any. In that instant. In that moment. Just then - as his tip surpassed her threshold, and he shook upwards into her - he remembered what it was like to have his body taken from him and used.

But now it wasn't Nidhogg. He was a vessel to his own bestial nature.

"Does it please you?"

She wore that smirk like a badge of honor while she shifted her hips. The sounds their bodies made could have driven him mad. At the least, they melted his ability to feign indifference. "Yes…"

"Is this...positive affirmation?"

"Just work, you. There's no need for talk…"

His grip on her wrists loosened. He was letting himself enjoy it. Warmth spread through his body like the prior evening’s alcohol. When he opened his eyes, he enjoyed the spectacle, too - Aymeric's shirt slipping down her shoulder, her breasts bobbing in response to her effort, her hard nipples speaking through the thin, white fabric.

Oh, Aymeric. _Lucky bastard_.

Why?

Why did he have to think that? On paper, it didn’t make any sense.

To distract himself, he cupped both of her breasts through her shirt and watched her try to move with the same vigor with him toying at her nipples. Her thighs had started shaking as she strained, and she was giving him that pitiful look - the one that said _soon, soon._ The one that said _you must take over_. But that he would not do.

“Keep going,” he said, through gritted teeth.

She tried to respond, but could speak no words he recognized. When her knees knocked into his chest, he knew she had reached climax. He could feel it in her body, too, those tell-tale pulses, the tremble of her hands upon his collar bone.

But he hadn’t come yet. “Keep _going_.”

“Ah...ah...I…”

Can? Can’t? Whatever her answer, she was taking so long. With the Warrior yet in the throes of blinding pleasure, Estinien grabbed her hips and held her so he could rail in and out of her from beneath. It didn’t take long; watching her squirm with sensitivity enhanced his own experience. Soon, blood rushed in his ears until that final moment of raw feeling - and he came inside her.

She cried out and fell upon his chest. His hands wound up moving from her hips to her back. He kept his eyes closed. He didn’t want to see how like proper lovers they looked.

“Estinien,” she said, lips pressed into his neck.

“My friend.”

“Thank you.”

He furled his brow. They were both panting like animals and sharing a coat of sweat. “My pleasure, really.”

“Do you think...I am making bad decisions?”

_Yes_. But how to phrase it? That one word didn’t sum up his understanding of her vulnerability, of the way she mourned. There was something wrong and also right about their being together, her being with Aymeric, the three of them sharing a bed from time to time.

He understood. “Better, I think...to make bad decisions with us than others.”

_Because we care_, he should have added.

_Because I care_.


	14. pure beam - plot/crystal exarch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Second to last chapter until 5.1 content comes out ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
> 
> I know it says 13/15 for now but I'm also adding a table of contents at some point.
> 
> **Chapter 13**  
The Warrior and G'raha try to take it slow, parsing one another's vulnerabilities in the never-ending quest to be together for the _right_ reasons. <strike>and maybe bang</strike>

The Warrior didn’t know the song, nor the words when they met her ears. But she knew the voice. Instead of answering, she kept her eyes closed and squeezed the warm body entangled with her own. The air chilled her, but that melody, emanating even from his chest, comforted her more than covers could have.

When G’raha sang what appeared to be the final note, she lifted her head from his chest, noticing his blushing face before the sunrise.

“Ah,” he said. “You’re awake.”

“Have you managed a tune all night?”

“N-no...I just...you appeared to have been dreaming.”

“Hm.” She rubbed her sleep-dry eyes with a hand she’d gripped around his collar. “You mean...bad dreams.”

“Yes...though far be it from me to blame you.”

_After what I’ve told you, yes?_ She put the ugly thought away and stretched, then curled her legs up so they lay across his thighs. Although G’raha had made her quite comfortable through the night - despite what had likely been nightmares - she felt guilty for leaving him with nothing but Xande’s bare throne to lie upon. “When did I wake you, then?”

He pursed and unpursed his lips, like he was working out a bit of shame. “Forgive me, Warrior. Perhaps half a bell ago. But I needn’t sleep as much as others, given the nature of my relationship to the Tower.”

“Of course.” She meant to rest her head upon him once more, perhaps close her eyes a bit longer…but she remembered something and set her eyes back up. “I do believe that’s a lie.”

“Oh?”

“The people of the Crystarium tell me they worry for your habit of working when you ought sleep.”

“Ah…” The breeze shifted a strand of his untied hair over his shoulder. Once he’d fixed it back, he held her twice as hard, rubbed up and down her shoulders as though to coax her somehow closer. The crystal slipped over her scales, and before either of them had noticed, her nose was about an ilm from his own. He smelled like morning, crisp and clean. “They need not worry for me.”

“Perhaps.” She moved to straddle him and wrapped her arms around his neck, wearing a testy pout. With her hips atop his, their heads were at about the same level. “But _I_ would like to. To worry on your behalf.”

An aetherial force must have weighed his eyes down, because no longer would he meet her gaze. An aetherial force or some _other disturbance_, she thought. A single syllable escaped his lips before he turned away completely and pushed his forearm against his eyes.

The Warrior let go. “G’raha? Are you - “

“Forgive me.” Determined as he was to hide his tears, his voice wore all of them. “I am still processing what exactly has transpired since your return. I am trying to find anything that will convince me one way or another…”

“Convince you of what?”

Air rushed in and out of him in two quick bursts. An attempt to calm himself, she figured. Once he was satisfied, he peeked from behind the semi-translucent blue of his arm. “Whether I am a fool to believe any of this is happening...or indeed if it should…”

Her eyes slipped from his to his chin, then the bits of crystal peeking from beneath his robe. In the light of the rising sun, they’d lost some of their own color in favor of yellow, gold, like geodes hidden in the deep. Easier to think about lights than the words she next spoke. “You are...having second thoughts?”

“No! You must understand.” He raised himself and wrapped his fingers around the bends of her arms. She had to lean back to accommodate his outburst. The frenzy gripped him such that he no longer cared to wipe the little beads of water that had trailed down his cheeks. “All of my thoughts are for you. Each moment I live is one in which I live to...p-please you...protect you if I can…”

So early was it she couldn’t write off the possibility that the tremble of her teeth was a symptom not of emotional vulnerability, but of yet needed sleep. “But…?” she asked.

“But it feels _wrong_ to be given this chance to lie with you as a...as a lover would.”

As he yet held her arms, she locked her ringless fingers together so he couldn’t tell she was shaking. “You are...overwhelmed,” she said.

He gasped in affirmation, sending his wispy bangs to shadow his expression. “I _am_ overwhelmed. By you and by my own fatal _selfishness_ at having had you, when really you should…”

She lowered her brow. Defiant, now. “I should what?”

“You should be with almost anyone other than myself...an old man ignorantly blessed with far too much borrowed time than he deserves...”

She bit her lip and ogled her own hands. Hardened by the lance. Tempered by trauma. Wielded by light and darkness alike, as each called her a vessel.

So varied and tangible were the paths before her she nigh felt them on her shoulders. The Warrior that had come to Gridania would have wilted. The Warrior who had felled the Ultima Weapon may have slipped and knocked some confidence into him with a hot slap to the face. If Haurchefant had said such things to her, she would have thought him a tactless flatterer and burst into laughter herself before launching herself into his arms.

But G’raha...she had learned enough about being alive to discern a path she chanced would suit the both of them.

She started by resting the back of her hand against his neck. “You do not truly believe that…” Red eyes upon her, she ran her thumb at the edge of the crystal until she’d reached his other side. “You are trying to protect yourself.”

A mumble-turned attempt at speech rose in his throat, but she cut him off.

“Shh,” she said, gaze dark. “I know this truth, for I sense in you the same weakness I possessed upon our first meeting.”

“You...you cannot mean…” So low was his voice that the Warrior had to strain to hear him above the thick air. “Our meeting on the Source, so long ago.”

“Of course I do…” She willed him back a bit so she could rest her forehead against his. _Warmth_ propelled her, perhaps something else. She felt well-ignited. “You are afraid to let another love you, for fear of what the loss of love would render.”

“Love me?”

“Care for you, know you. Any and all.” Their noses pressed together. Fitting her arms beneath his and around his back felt as natural as breathing. The calm she called upon gifted her the will to continue speaking. “You have lost much and more than I could fathom and yet...I hold that the love _I_ lost should have killed me, were it not for the profound change it…_he_ affected in me. Do you understand?”

G’raha said her name like a tiny prayer and hid his face against her shoulder.

Why she had ever thought to hide her nerves from him, she wasn’t sure. The man was stricken with levin himself. Without the Warrior embracing him, he could have tumbled from the throne, so she kept her hold.

“My Haurchefant,” she said. “Gods rest his soul. I know I am young and naive but...” She waited, knowing too fast a tempo would wrest her capacity for wordcraft or worse. “He taught me that you _must_ allow yourself to be loved and to _love_ in kind. For should your companion away before you have opened your heart, you shall feel that loss a thousandfold.”

He shook his head, still pressed against her shoulder. “You are so important to me,” he said. “Loathe am I to do anything that would force us to cause one another pain.”

Warrior of Darkness as she was, the Exarch’s words brought her light. She breathed out a stunted laugh and admitted that _no_, she would not survive this conversation without letting at least one tear free. “Pain is aught I daresay the both of us can handle well enough.”

“You may be right about that.”

A smile won her lips. He would have appreciated it. “Tease me if you will,” she said. “But I truly believe what I have said to you this morning.” She edged him from the embrace and set her hands once again on his shoulders. The sight of his beautiful, cautious, unaging face nearly broke her - but she persevered through his charms. “All I ask is that you give _trust_ a chance.”

After a flurry of blinks, he kept his eyes open long enough to cry his answer. “I trust you. And you…”

“I trust you, G’raha.”

With his knuckles rubbing his eyes, he sighed. “I am a pitiful creature,” he said.

“Nay.”

“And what’s more - it is far too early for this.”

She leaned back onto his thighs and set her tail between his legs.. “I can agree with you there.” From their place on the throne, high above the Crystarium, she felt as though she and G’raha were the only souls for malms. “Though I believe sunrises are some of the best places to have such conversations. To ask sorry questions.”

“I...I’ve got one then.”

“Hm?”

“Could you...may I kiss you?” The red of his face had surpassed the red of his hair. Lips pressed together, he turned away.

The Warrior thought it was perhaps the most endearing expression she’d ever seen. “All that and you feel as though you must ask permission? For a kiss?”

“On second thought...perhaps tis best I endeavor to sleep a bit longer. And you as well.”

“Are you asking for help relaxing?”

“No! No. Well…”

“Kiss me!” A triumphant command wrung out of a lover’s laugh - and he obeyed.

The kiss built slowly. He had his hands around her waist, thumbs strong against her ribcage . Every now and then she could feel the fur of his tail brushing against her arms around him, light as the wind. Lazily, she prodded his lips with her tongue and won a little groan that had her shifting her hips forward and pushing him back against the throne.

He fumbled to part her robe with love-clumsy fingers, and she offered no assistance. She was focused on finding something to grind against.

And she _did_ find something - he nearly broke the kiss gasping, but she locked him in with her arms. Each time she shifted, his will ebbed a bit more until the shock subsided. Rhythm pulled from him little pleasure sounds and his eyes were heavy with lust by the time she pulled away.

He blinked, panting, and said her name.

She wiped her lips with her thumb. “I’ll bet you haven’t thought to use the throne for something like this, no?”

“Like what, pray tell?”

“You don’t know?”

“Perhaps I am a bit afraid...and curious.”

She ran her fingers over _his_ lips, then, and found them just as soft and wanting as her own. “Oh, I think you well know…” Then to his chin, to his collarbone, to part the robe. Soon, she could access what she wanted.

He relaxed his legs and she positioned herself over his knee, trying not to lash her tail about in anticipation. When she tested his tip with her tongue, he made a sound not unlike a woman. Her eyes darted to his face.

With knitted eyebrows, he begged. “Pray...continue…”

“I want to do this slowly, Raha. Would you have that?”

“Oh…”

“Hmm?”

“That name...I fear if you use it among others I’ll...I’ll melt or burst otherwise.”

“Ah.” Eyes back to to his length, twitching and pleading. “I might be persuaded to keep it between us.”

Whatever reply he’d been mulling over, she floated it by pressing her tongue flat against him and drawing him in. His hands searched for something, came to his chest, then to his sides, fingers clenching and unclenching. When her lips approached his base, he exhaled.

“Mercy…”

She ringed her fingers around what she couldn’t quite get in her mouth and rode her lips up and down, like waves. Perhaps she should have been ashamed of her ability to make a man shudder with her mouth - some would certainly shame her - but the sounds that drifted to her ears made her nothing but proud. Proud and sinfully excited.

“You’ll...you’ll have me too soon…”

He winced when she removed her lips to speak, but her hand was diligent on his spit-wetted shaft. “Are you not the master of your own tower?” Mouth back down, lapping at his tip.

“Ha...ha...you seek to provoke me?”

She laughed. “Is it possible?”

A hand made its way to her neck to rest, not to force or guide as some previous lovers had. “Mayhap,” he said. “Though I am more than content to...to let you have your way…”

“Hmm.” She stopped and rose onto her knees, letting her borrowed robe slip over her shoulders. The sight sent G’raha craning forward, gawking like he was seeing her bare breasts for the first time again. But not long was it before he set his gentle eyes to her face and smiled.

"You shame the sunrise with your beauty," he said.

She set her hands on her hips. "Those words are too kind for me."

"They are fully meant."

A combination of things worked to soften her attitude. First, G’raha reached with both of his palms up and caught her fingertips like petals falling from a blossoming tree. Then, a thought occurred to the Warrior - that despite their differences, G’raha matched her lost lover in _sincerity_. In a way, it felt like two sets of hands were upon her for a moment. The weakness it engendered made it easy for him to pull her closer.

He cradled the back of her head. “If you would have me allow myself to love,” he said, “would you allow yourself to be loved gently?”

Her voice caught. “S...says the man who sent me to the stars last night.”

“I don’t need aggression to do that.”

_What a line_, she thought. Though it had been full effective on her, embarrassed as she was to admit it. “What would you have me do?”

He rolled his head on his shoulders, like he was considering a number of profundities. Without sharing his thoughts, he grazed his thumb from her sternum to her hip bones. There, he paused to further shed her of her robe before cupping her pelvis with his middle finger cheating at her clit.

“Ah…”

He coaxed her up and forward so her entrance sat just above his cock, ever ready. With eyelids low, he looked up and whispered. “Should it please you…”

_Tell him how silly he is_, some self commanded in her head. But she could not. She took him seriously…

...and she took him in.

He mouthed her name and craned his neck back against the throne. She tensed her tail around his leg, managing the sensation of fullness threatening to overwhelm her. The crisp morning air was nothing to the heat of his cock inside her.

“Wait,” he said, huffing. “A moment, I pray.” His forehead hit her sternum and hot breaths rode across her skin. “Forgive me...my restraint is not yet...what it once was. Slow as I may want to go.”

She planted a kiss at the part of his hair. “Feral or kind, you are my lover regardless.”

One full sigh and he was looking up at her. “You may move now.”

She kissed his wet lips and tried to remember how to really take her time.

-

By the third or fourth cycle of her hips, G'raha realized he had stopped breathing sensibly. Pressing his cheek into his shoulder, spit dripped from his tongue to his collarbone, but he was too sense-dead to do anything about it. He would let her rock over his body as long as he could manage it...perhaps even a bit longer…

“Raha,” she said, her voice about an octave higher than usual. “You know I could...do this all morning. I could do this for the rest of my life. You feel so..._correct_ inside me...”

He wanted to keep his eyes open so he could properly smile at her, but his face had frozen in that pleasure-stricken mask, open mouth, high twisted eyebrows. It was hard enough managing a few words. “I can’t tell you how...happy…”

She moaned. “Look at me, Raha.”

A hand caught each of his cheeks, willed him the right way like he’d become a doll. But he was happy to see that she looked just as addled as he. Their lips came together - he wasn’t sure if he or the Warrior had incited it - but the next natural step was to take her breast in his hand and rub just a little slower than he thought she wanted.

She broke away and exhaled, only to bring their lips together again. G’raha held his breath each time she tightened around his cock, wanting to release - knowing the longer he held back the closer he’d come to tasting godhood. With his vitality, he might not have a choice in the matter. How many times would they fuck before he felt like he could handle her like a man of vigor? His eyes watered, imagining the possibilities.

The sun glistened on his skin. _Gods_, he wished he could have lasted until it had reached its highest point. He wished they could have fucked until some soul chanced through the tower and found them at the throne, covered in sweat and glowing like aetheryte.

But it was not to be.

“I’m going to…if you don’t mind…” She kept rocking him and moved one hand to her clit. No sooner had she started rubbing than his body sounded the alarms; he could not but _hyperfocus_ on the sight of her cunt slicking up and down around his erection, her little fingers just above their point of union - the sounds, the pressure - 

The next thrust pulled his orgasm from him.

“I’m...sorry!”

Come rushed into her. She fell forward and knocked her knees at his hips, keen on fucking him even as his eyes rolled back and his cock went numb from the sudden pleasure. He saw stars, but she kept going, fingernails drilling into his shoulders. Soon, he couldn’t help but flinch at each of her movements, whimper then cry then _sing_ her name as she finished around him.

“Raha,” she said, finally rocking forward and bumping her forehead into his with little grace.

He opened his eyes to regard their hips, still pressed together. Seed - _his_ seed - dripped from her flesh to his. The surface of the throne now wet with their sweat, he laughed as he was able. The overstimulation made him feel like his own voice echoed through his bones.

“I suppose this really is my throne now,” he said, trying not to think about those who had claimed the spot through other means.

“Ours.” Spoken into his ear, almost instantly.

“Indeed…” Bare as they were, he felt safe. But he couldn’t be certain whether her presence or his understanding engendered the feeling. Certainly, she knew how to ease him...but could it be her words had more than a temporary effect?

_Allow yourself to be loved._

Perhaps he could, though she had only so recently experienced severance from, as far as he knew, her first and greatest love. This was not something he could overlook. He had to embrace and accept her pain, help her through it if he could. And if she found herself needing another type of companionship when their time together came to an end, that was something he had to be willing to endure.

“Promise me,” he said, trailing his fingers through her hair. “Promise me you will keep that ring always.”

She mumbled in peaceful acknowledgement, like she hadn't quite woken from euphoria.

“I pray.” He tightened his arms around her shoulders, held her as best he could. “Do not sacrifice your past on my behalf. Our histories shape and recreate us. And I’d not like to lose a single part of you. If the time comes that we should cease to know one another in this way...”

She raised her head and looked at him.

He swallowed, nodding. “I ask only that you keep some part of me as well.”


	15. orogenesis - plot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ** Chapter 14**  
The Warrior returns to the Source to get some closure from someone she's been avoiding for a while.
> 
> End of part one. More to come with 5.1. There's also going to be a sexy spin-off series. So...have fun waiting for that.

It happened that her return to the Source came ten nights and eleven days later. Eager as she was to spend more time with her new lover, she could not abandon certain responsibilities to wither away one lustful evening at a time.

She did not stop at the Rising Stones, nor Camp Dragonhead. When she came upon Ishgard proper, the hour was late, but still she traveled past the Forgotten Knight, past the Brume, and into the Pillars anyway.

By that time, stars had blinked into the sky. Each one reminded her of someone she had avoided on her trek to the Last Vigil - Tataru, Emmanellain, others. But she made her way towards one she had avoided far longer. Far too long.

When she could see her destination, she slowed her pace and tried to control her breathing. Sweat pooled beneath her mail, sweat that cooled her a bit too much now that she was going slower. The streets were nigh empty. A few guards meandered from point to point of interest, and one in particular stood where he always had, waiting for her and hers.

She wasn’t trying to catch his attention - quite the opposite - but his head darted to her nonetheless. Even from beneath his helmet, she could see his eyes grow wide with recognition and shock. He couldn’t see _her_ face, but there was only one of that stature and build who donned a Drachen armet like hers.

Her horns also hinted at her identity.

“M-milady!” He stumbled forward, caught between a bow and a salute. He nearly ended up with a kneel.

She waved him down and grimaced, knowing she would enter the manor wet with sweat after all, unannounced and her lungs burning from the cold.

“Ishgard’s savior, and the world’s besides,” the guard said. “Are you come to see - “

“The old lord, if he’s yet awake.”

The guard cocked his head. “You speak of Lord Edmont?”

“Aye.”

He nodded slowly at first, but faster as his lips opened. “Tis like he yet lingers in his study. I can...have you escorted.”

She clicked her helmet off and exhaled, watching her breath dance from her mouth into the atmosphere. “I can find my own way.”

-

Often she had left her helmet in the sitting room, but it didn’t feel right under her current circumstances. An empty spot in the parlor beckoned her sense of nostalgia - _you can just set it here, it isn’t a bother_ \- but she hadn’t just returned from the Aery or the Vault or Azys Lla. She would rest her head elsewhere. Sweat on other sheets. Cry into another pillow, if it came to that.

The warmth of the house was the only thing that kept its halls from looking, from _feeling_ empty. Somewhere a fire burned, its buzz suggesting a lord sipping tea and flipping to the next page of a grand old tale. The Warrior swallowed and stepped deeper into the half-lit manor, like she was exploring a liminal space.

The door to Edmont’s study was open. He appeared before her sudden and grand, dark brows framing blue eyes set upon his book. Though she made no effort to conceal herself - indeed, she thought her nerves would have rendered a more silent approach nigh impossible - he never broke his concentration. Whatever he was reading made him smile. She thought it likely he mistook her approaching footsteps for those of a manservant or maid working into the evening.

Once she reached his door, he realized no maid clinks as loud as she.

The smile stayed painted on his face even as he raised his head to see what manner of knight trudged about the Manor Fortemps. The Warrior’s lips shook when surprise forced his mouth open. With the fireplace at his back, a new light colored him, a colder one, but the twinkle in his eye remained.

He spoke her name like it alone could light the manor.

“Lord Edmont,” she said, her cheeks full with a wide-brimmed smile, one she knew the right combination of words could shatter like glass. “I pray you forgive my coming unannounced.”

The Count rose from his seat, arms wide. She nearly expected to embrace him, but soon he raised his hands in a gesture not unlike one she’d seen his late son make many times. Palms upward, face beaming; it was perhaps the most like Haurchefant she had ever seen him. “The Warrior of Light is welcome in my house at any and all hours. That shall ever be as true as night and day.”

She had no desire to tell him how she’d come to know those concepts as a bit less set in stone than he presumed. “I should...come more often.”

“Sit,” he said, gesturing to a second chair not far from the fireplace.

She stepped into the room, but shook her head. “I...I don’t mean to trouble you long.”

“You are no trouble.”

“I know, but - “

Firm hand on her shoulder. “You are no trouble. Sit.”

She pursed her lips and nodded. Finding the chair, she set her helm at her feet and clasped her hands over her knees. Despite Edmont’s warmth and declarations of praise, she had never quite grown close to him, felt comfortable speaking as an equal in his presence. Unlike Emmanellain and even Artoirel, Edmont had an air of deep lineage about him. He was perhaps the only noble whose nobility she had no choice but to respect.

He sat and set his elbows on the armrests, fingers together. “I hear you have made a name for yourself as a liberator.”

She smiled and looked to the flames.

“Doma, Ala Mhigo...but not before you freed Ishgard from a legacy of bloodshed and deceit.”

“None of that would have transpired were it not for your hospitality.”

He chuckled. “Opening our hearts and home to adventurers of your ilk was no difficult task, child.”

_Of course, it would have been harder without a certain knight’s endorsement._

The Warrior sat on that thought, listening to the fire. Edmont shifted and tapped a finger at his lips.

“I am no fool,” he said after a while. “You wear a grim countenance beneath your smile. Had sorrow not befallen us, I’d be less surprised to see you come to Ishgard more often.”

Her shoulders drooped. “I love this city well,” she said, halfway hypnotized by the dancing flames. “This house and this family. That is why I…”

A log broke. A flurry of sparks puffed from the fireplace and faded into gray. The Warrior turned to Edmont, lips yet searching for the proper explanation.

“You need make no excuse,” he said, shaking his head. “There are days I question whether I would leave, had I the option. Or at least the proper walking shoes.”

She smiled and wiped her eyes out of habit, though she had yet to shed a single tear.

“I am glad you have come.” He turned to the fire and held his hands together once more. “It does me well to spend time with one whom I know loved my son as much as I.”

The Warrior clenched her eyes shut and bent forward, hoping he couldn’t see her, hoping her pain hadn’t sent a ripple through the aether itself. “There is...something I must tell you. Something he...Haurchefant wanted to tell you...yet I…”

He didn’t respond for a while, but she kept her eyes closed. She wanted to rub her hands together, to curl her legs to her chest, but she couldn’t rely on ticks to get her through this conversation.

So much silence passed - she had _no choice_ but to speak. A gasp broke her eyes open.

“I can’t find the words,” she said. “Words will not do him justice, I...I can only show you what he showed me.”

Edmont’s eyes were heavy. Ready. “Show me, child.”

She held her lips tight to keep them from trembling and reached into her bag. Finding the tiny wooden box was easy. For weeks it had been slipping into her hands when she sought other things. But it remained with her nonetheless. Once she had it, she held it in one palm and set the other at its lid, turning to Edmont before prying it open.

As he saw the ring, she knew it was one he recognized. A familial piece. Perhaps something he’d given Haurchefant upon knighthood and searched his effects for after his passing. _That ring_, he may have wondered. _Had he given it to someone after all?_ The expression he wore was one of agonized acceptance, not at the choice his son had made, but at the choice on which his son_ had been unable to follow through_.

“I am sorry,” the Warrior said through tears. “I kept this from you. He had wanted to tell you himself, and since he didn’t get - I just kept it to myself, thinking it would - I never thought to - “

“I would have no other,” he started, deep voice bearing the role of his heritage, “wear this ring.”

“I should have returned it, or informed you otherwise.”

“It is yours to keep. And to wear.”

Her arms grew weak. “How can I?”

“My dear child.” His voice betrayed the sorrow he had tried to wield without breaking. “Grief does not diminish best when hidden away in a wooden box. Nay, it grows stronger.”

“Edmont, I - “

He stood and took the box. The flames cast half his towering body in orange. “Your gauntlet.”

She sniffled and worked the metal from her left hand as best she could, feeling like a child. Edmont knelt before her, so close she could see his tears even in shadow. Armor in her lap, he steadied her wrist with his free hand. The ring hugged her calloused finger, but not so much that it hurt.

As soon as the Count had completed the task, they both stared at the bejeweled silver piece on her finger. Instead of questioning whether it looked or felt right, she wondered what Edmont thought of it? If he regretted insisting she put it on? One pain that kept her from Ishgard was the pain that forced her to fear disappointing this man - the one who could have been her father by law.

At the same time, she and Edmont looked up, eyes locked and all water. And then, laughing through tears like fools, they embraced until they could once again wear smiles worthy of Haurchefant’s final words.

-

-

-

_Garlemald_. Of all places in the world, Estinien had wound up in an inconspicuous hostel in _Garlemald._

If the Scions had the right of it, the Warrior was in an even stranger place.

Perhaps that’s why he thought on her so often. His perils, his mission, his wounds, called to mind hers. _He_ fought the Empire. She fought - 

Well, the Scions hadn’t been entirely clear. And he hadn’t entirely retained the explanation. But he knew she had gone somewhere few could follow, fighting on behalf of her fellow Scions and perhaps the world itself. Perhaps another world altogether.

When he thought of Aymeric, he thought not of his companion’s safety nor his place on the Gyr Abanian front. Not often, anyway. Mostly Estinien considered: if indeed he survived long enough to see the Warrior once more, could Aymeric survive the bond he thought he might be capable of forging with his fellow dragoon?

He tightened a bandage around his bicep and winked through the burn.

Perhaps thinking of the Warrior helped him justify the thoroughly sought aid he inexplicably continued extending to the Scions. Or perhaps he’d see her again and find his feelings remained.

It hadn’t occurred to him that the Warrior might return to the Source with thoughts of neither him nor Aymeric on her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading through this...it's always going to be special in my heart even if I am afraid to read some of the earlier stuff I've written...
> 
> I hope it only gets better from here! See you all after 5.1 and be sure to check me out on tumblr/twitter @crystalsexarch if you ever have requests, comments, conversation. It seriously makes my day every single time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you much for reading!! I am in love with this community.
> 
> Find me also on tumblr and twitter as crystalsexarch...and bless u...
> 
> **ALSO** Thank you for my first work with 100+ kudos, I'm going to cry ;-; Please let me know if you ever have requests, it would honor me to write dirty stuff for this lovely community.


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